Well, good morning. And this morning we're here
with Dr. Phil Harris, the executive director of the
Association for Educational Communications and Technology and Phil, we
appreciate you joining us for the History makers project.
Thank you for the invitation, Barbara. Um First,
let's start off by having you tell us a little
bit about yourself and your background. Well, I
attended Indiana University as an undergraduate and then taught elementary
level 5th and 6th grade in the Bloomington uh school
system for three years and then had an opportunity to
return to graduate school. It at the Indiana University
where I majored in psychology and research and elementary education
is a minor as a part of my research program
. I was able to work with a psychology professor
working on at that time, one of the early
versions of an instructional design program, it was named
programmed tutoring. We had several meetings with robert gagne
at florida state. Uh, at that time I
had no idea he would become the legend that he
became And to feel like I had a firsthand connection
with him really grows more valuable the older I get
. But that uh experience with the Psychology Department at
the Indian University for 13 years really prepared me to
move into a research directorship at Indiana University, being
a part of the school of education and the department
of Psychology. So I had a joint appointment there
for a number of years before I moved into Fifth
Delta Kappa as the director of the new Center for
Professional Development. So I feel like I've had a
long history and a long experience based in some part
of our instructional design field. And I feel very
fortunate to be able to have as a capstone of
my career, a relationship with a E. C
. T. And being able to be a part
of helping to move this organization from Washington D.
C. to bloomington was that I felt like a
very important contribution. The organization was looking to find
a location that would enable it to operate with less
overhead expense. The University of Georgia and florida state
were two of the institutions that submitted a proposal,
along with the agency for instructional technology for a E
C. T to join. and eight in Bloomington
made The offer that the board at that time in
1999 chose as the best alternative for a CT.
So the office was moved there. We hired,
I was hired, we put together a small staff
and we've been growing ever since. What I thought
was going to be maybe a year or two,
uh, job in transition from uh, to retirement
turns out to be a whole new second career.
So I feel very fortunate to have been able to
really be a part of the E. C.
T. And help it establish itself as a premier
international organization. Again. Okay, what do you
see as some of the highlights of your involvement in
act in the time that you have been with us
? Well, there's a couple of things that really
stand out. one is that when when I first
became a part of the act, much of the
focus was still on the hardware and software that was
being developed as a part of the shift in the
technology movement. We had a during our convention sessions
, it was not hard to find sessions dealing with
specific pieces of software and how to use them and
then specific hardware and how to use that particular piece
of hardware, But in the past decade, and
we're now in 2012 In the past 10 years,
the shift has been, I think, rather significant
in that if you would look at our convention program
today, you probably wouldn't find any sessions dealing with
either topic. The software are the hardware. The
focus is really on learning. What ties this really
disparate group of professional people together from my perspective is
there simply their simple overriding issue in learning and learning
is what everybody is about. Learning is what everyone
wants as a part of their end product. Whether
they're teaching how to do something very basic are having
long term goals in an online class or in a
face to face class. Learning is what drives what
we did. You spoke a minute ago about the
diversity of the different groups um that are housed within
a. U. C. T. All the
different divisions. Um And some of the affiliate groups
and you suggested that learning is the key element that
holds us all together. You see that diversity groups
changing over the years staying the same. How do
you think that's going to evolve? Well that's something
I wish I knew I could live long enough to
see how it ends up. When I when I
think about the learning issues at the beginning of my
career, the there was only one learning principle,
there was only one learning theory or else effectively won
. The behaviorist was what drove everything everybody did.
The cognitive group was just trying to establish some kind
of a toehold in the field and really struggled.
And even in 2012, I'm not sure the cognitive
science, the cognitive psychologists have really established a serious
threat to behaviorism as it continues to drive much of
what we do in terms of learning. But I
think as we discover more about how the brain functions
, how learning actually happens, we're going to find
out what the difference is between conditioning and learning.
And I think this despair group that we have as
a as a membership from all countries from europe,
from Asia are really going to help ferret out those
key elements based on what scientists are understanding about how
to bring functions and being able to piece this together
in different ways that will enable us to think about
new theories of learning, new understandings of the conditions
needed for learning to occur. And I think this
will even broaden our base of membership in the years
to come, because we'll have even a broader group
of people focusing on learning. If I was at
a meeting recently in indiana where there was a group
talking about how how important it was for teachers in
the future to be first and foremost, have a
content uh major. And I sat there in that
audience and listen to these so called experts and wondered
why none of them seem to understand that learning is
the content major for all teachers but none of them
seem to recognize the importance of understanding learning and I
think that understanding is going to be the the glue
that will bind this future together in ways we're not
sure of today. Speaking of your involvement in the
national conversation with regard to teacher professional development in current
issues in education, you've been very active in the
conversation related to um testing and assessment, standardized tests
and the brake test. Uh no child left behind
. And um so related to that. What role
do you see A E. C. T.
Playing in that conversation? Well I think we're an
organization that's in one of the best positions to really
help the world understand that there are different ways to
define learning. And we have to start out with
a clear, concise definition of learning all of the
assessment that we're going through today assumes that learning is
defined by number and that number comes from the standardized
test that's supposedly represents some level of achievement. If
you can score some magic number and I think act
is going to help the world understand that. Assessment
has to be purpose assessment and evaluation has to be
purpose driven that when you want to evaluate something I
want to ask you and for what purpose? Doctor
locke Do you want me to evaluate the the achievement
of our nation's schools? Well you might come up
with an answer to that question but from the answer
to that question I can start building a set of
activities that are directly embedded in the purpose that you
want to to achieve in your assessment. And I
believe given the background of instructional design, every instructional
designer worth their professional credential starts with the purpose of
my instructional program here is to and as an organization
we understand it better than any other profession that we
have to help the nation or the world understand that
all of our evaluation, assessment and measurement and many
people don't make a distinction between those words. They
think they mean all the same thing. And that's
unfortunate too. Like evaluation and accountability has become such
a uh huh. Uh a mess. Yeah.
People who use the term accountability to date are talking
about evaluation and don't realize it. But I think
we as an organization can help provide clarity, can
help provide understanding of why these terms need to be
defined and because we as a group, do it
better than any other group. And I think we're
in the prime position of any organization to really step
into a leadership role in helping to define why is
it that we have a public education system in the
first place? Many people wonder do we really need
a public education system? And that question hasn't been
discussed in our culture in about 200 years, and
it's time that we reinforce and I'm reluctant to use
that behaviorist term, but to reinforce within our culture
, why thomas Jefferson thought of public education system was
essential to the survival of the democracy. And I
think that's something that has been overlooked and dropped off
the radar of many people. We don't think of
it as being an important driver in our future.
And I think again as an association, we're in
a unique position to tie these important elements back together
. And the understanding that I've appreciated of many of
the leaders in this organization clearly shows me that we
are right at the edge of being able to step
out and provide the leadership to the world in this
area well related to that. What do you see
as the future of our organization? My vision is
fairly short sighted And it's hard to determine just where
we might be in five years, much less 10
years. We now are at a point where the
, The future of education is hard to predict because
we have so many more options to obtain it today
than we did 2030, 40, 50 years ago
. There was a time when education was defined by
a location, brick and mortar. Uh, you
could only go to school if you went to school
, you could only learn if you were in school
, you could only learn if you had a teacher
in front of you, so to speak. We
now have many more ways for individuals to learn and
to learn about things. They're interested in much greater
detail. And I think this organization is in the
position to really see that future quicker and more clearly
than any other organization. We're not content driven,
we're learning driven. We have such a special focus
that we're not going to be tied to tradition as
much as many other organizations. And if I were
asked to, I could identify some organizations that will
disappear in the next decade because their focus is so
narrow and so traditionally bound that they will become obsolete
. Act will never become obsolete because learning will never
die. Mathematics will change, Science will change.
Social studies will change. English will change. New
content standards may be developed, but learning will never
change how we think of learning, how we want
to measure learning how we want to define it.
That's going to change all the time. And I
believe again that this organization is set to really take
advantage of this future. We have some things in
our favor, not only including the membership, but
the publications that enable us to really put information out
quickly and accurately and timely. Its timeliness is so
important. These days in our publications itself are setting
new standards in what's being published primarily R. E
T. R and D. Research Journal is one
of the world's foremost journals today. Tech trends,
which is growing and is coming to becoming the publication
that we all wanted it to be. Our new
online journals are really going to create a new opportunity
for the world to see as we continue to define
important elements of the learning process. And I believe
understanding the elements of the learning process will be what
shapes our future, I don't think will be driven
as much by the latest handheld device because who knows
what that's going to be. I'm looking at the
camera that's capturing our conversation and thinking about the simply
the simple size of these cameras over the last 50
years, as I mentioned before we started this,
one of the early cameras I remember required two people
to carry around and those of you listening just find
that funny. But if you look into some of
the old video, you'll find those huge cameras that
took two very large men to manage, wanted to
hold it and want to figure out where all the
buttons were. So I think we're uniquely positioned to
really build that future. We don't know for sure
what it is, but we know what the elements
are that we want to be a part of as
an organization and what we have the capacity to do
as a group of really competent, capable and,
and in, in individuals. Let me just ask
you one more question. Um, do you have
any really good stories that you'd like to shoot?
Uh huh. Good 12. You feel is the
executive director. You have a long-term perspective on the
organization and you wouldn't have collected some good stories over
the years. There are some wonderful stories that one
of the story I enjoy telling the most was when
we first moved to bloomington and uh, we had
some financial problems. I didn't know how serious they
were. And we had a few, I was
getting a few letters from law firms wanting to know
what we were going to do about the certain debts
. And and one day I came into the office
and the mail was there and there was another letter
from another law firm that had not seen. And
so I told my secretary, I don't want to
look at that one today. Uh, so about
four o'clock that afternoon. I decided, well I
didn't have anything else to do that day. So
I took that letter off the counter and opened it
up. And when I opened it up I just
almost went speechless. It was a check for$375,000
from the luis benton Wagner estate. And I didn't
know what to do with it. I wasn't sure
it was real. You know, you get these
Uh, letters in the mail that you're the winner
of$1 million$2 million dollars deep and find out
. So I called Kyle peck who was just the
past president at that time And I said do you
know anybody by the name of Louise Benton Wagner?
He said no, I said how quickly can you
find out? Because she just sent us$375,000?
Well he said, he asked me to call somebody
robert Harold who was a past president, immediate past
president. When I told robert, he said I've
heard of her, but I don't know who she
is either. And so the third person I was
asked to call newer and newer very well. And
that was adam Kinzinger and daddy gave me a story
of how this lady was a very important individual in
a perfect for all of her life and two,
she was not surprised that she left us such a
huge a part of her estate. Actually we were
one of 33 organizations to get a half a million
dollars. But this this was really what enabled the
team to bounce back quickly and to think that I
don't know what I have done differently that whole day
. But if I had opened up that letter in
the morning I don't know what I would have done
the rest of the day. But I know I
wouldn't have done what I did do which was trying
to figure out how to avoid talking to some people
. But we've had some interesting activities with regard to
uh the various uh leaders that have been a part
of A. E. C. T. Who
have all been extremely dedicated individuals. And I have
to say that one of the most exciting the experiences
of my tenure has to discover what real commitment and
loyalty and dedication looks like. And I have 14
people to point to anyone who wonders what's leadership look
like, what's loyalty looked like, what's dedication look
like. I've got a lengthy list of people who
I can show you what it is, how it
happens and who to talk to about what it means
. So I think my stories are in the people
that I have had the good fortune to work with
and be a part of that has helped give this
organization meaning and strength and future. Well, thank
you, Phil.