Instructional technology has evolved over the past century in the United States. In the early 1900s, school museums opened to provide visual materials for instruction. In the 1910s, instructional films were adopted for classroom use. During World War II, audiovisual devices were widely used for military and industrial training. In the postwar decades, theories of communication influenced instructional media. The 1950s saw growth in instructional television through funding and dedicated TV channels. Computers began being used for education in the 1980s and advances in digital technology over the past 15 years have further expanded instructional possibilities.

1. History of Instructional Technology in
the United States
A brief History of instructional technology in the United States accompanied with a timeline of instructional technology
By: Darisha Warren

2. History of
Instructional Media
• Instructional media is defined as the physical
means which instruction is presented to
learners (Reiser & Gagné, 1983). This definition
of the word means that every physical means of
instructional delivery, such as live instructors ,
textbook, the computer and so on, would be
classified as an instructional media (Reiser &
Dempsey, 2018).

3. School
Museums
• In St. Louis in 1905 the first Museum opened,
shorty after that and shortly after that school
museums were opened in Reading, Pennsylvania
and Cleveland, Ohio (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
• As Saettler (1968) has indicated, these museums
“served as the central administrative unit[s] for
visual instruction by [their] distribution of portable
museum exhibits, stereographs [three-dimensional
photographs], slides, films, study prints, charts, and
other instructional materials” (Reiser &
Dempsey, 2018).

4. The Visual Instruction
Movement and Instructional
Films
• In the United States, the first catalog of
instructional films was published in 1910.
• Later that year, the public school system of
Rochester, New York, became the first to adopt
films for regular instructional use (Reiser &
Dempsey, 2018).

5. The Audiovisual
Instruction Movement
and Instructional Radio
• During the remainder of the 1920s and
through much of the 1930s,
technological advances in such areas as
radio broadcasting, sound recordings,
and sound motion pictures led to
increased interest in instructional
media (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
• By 1930, commercial interests in the
visual instruction movement had
invested and lost more than $50
million, only part of which was due to
the Great Depression, which began in
1929 (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

6. World War II
• Audiovisual devices were used extensively in
the military services and in industry. For instance,
during the war the U.S. Army Air Force produced
more than 400 training films and 600 filmstrips,
and during a two-year period (from mid-1943 to
mid-1945) it was estimated that there were over 4
million showings of training films and filmstrips to
U.S. military personnel (Reiser & Dempsey,
2018).
• Training films were vital during preparations for
the war, it prepared U.S. civilians to work in
industry. In 1941, the federal government
established the Division of Visual Aids for War
Training (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

7. Theories of Communication
• In the decade after World War II, many leaders became
interested in various theories, theories or models of
communication (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
• Please models focused on the communication process,
which was a process involving a sender and receiver of the
messages any channel or medium through which the
message was sent (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

8. Instructional Television
• In 1952, there was a growth in the use of
instructional television.
• The growth of instructional television was the
1952 decision by the Federal Communications
Commission to set aside 242 television channels
for educational purposes (Reiser & Dempsey,
2018).
• The growth of instructional television during the
1950s was also stimulated by funding provided by
the Ford Foundation (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

9. Using Computers for
Instructional Purposes
• During the 1980's there was a lot of interest
in using computers for instruction (Reiser &
Dempsey, 2018).
• Computers were used for education and
training purposes at first.
• By the early 1980s, a few years after
personal computers became available to the
general public, the enthusiasm surrounding
this tool led to increasing interest in using
computers for instructional purposes
(Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

10. Recent Developments
• During the past fifteen years, rapid advances in computers and other
digital technology, including the Internet, have led to a rapidly
increasing interest in, and use of, these media for instructional
purposes (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
• Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are another form
of media that are playing an increasingly large role in the delivery of
instruction (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).

11. Reference:
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and issues in
Instructional Design and Technology. Pearson.