Towards a Research Agenda for Educational Technology Research

This chapter deals with educational technology pertaining to both the cities and times, and presents a research agenda to solve the problems. It discusses artifacts in terms of techno-functions and learning/pedagogical functions. Educational technologists, school principals and administrators, politicians and school boards, and educational advisors and advisor groups are either propagating or implementing technologies not based upon good science but upon commonly held, but often either unproven or untrue beliefs. The four components of instructional design and the ten steps are based on different learning processes: inductive learning, elaboration, knowledge compilation, and strengthening. The chapter shows learning technology either as field or as artifact needs to be based on/grounded in well-studied and well-formed theories. The construction of such theories is a long-term endeavor based on programmed research and the work of many collaborating researchers and practitioners, using a broad variety of research methods ranging from qualitative, randomized controlled trials.