Good morning. I'm Gary Morrison. I'm here with
David Merrill. His book, First Principles of Instruction was
just published. It's a synthesis of his ideas.
For the last 50 years. Today we're gonna be
talking about some of those ideas. Dave could you
provide us an overview of who you are, where
you've lived and the type of work you're currently doing
? Yeah, I can do that. I live
in ST George Utah, I retired from uh marriage
professor at Utah State University, but I live on
the other end of the state from where they are
. Uh, I lost the manual on retirement so
I continued to do things. I've teaching classes online
. I've talked recently at the University of Hawaii at
Utah State University a little earlier than that at florida
State University. Uh, obviously spent a little time
writing since I just finished this major textbook. So
that's basically who I am. I guess the other
important part of my life is that I'm married.
I between my wife and I, we have nine
Children and 44 grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Those
the most important accomplishment in my life. So I
know your work with the earth. It's followed several
paths, but there's been themes running through it.
What would you say your primary focus is none of
your research? Well, I think my primary focus
is has always been the question, although the question
recently formulated. But the question really, how do
you make instruction effective, efficient and engaging. That's
that I started out and maybe a little story here
would help. I, I got interested in education
when I was a missionary for the mormon church and
we used to go door to door and talk to
people about the church. And I've said many times
the church has to be true because the missionaries killed
it a long time ago if it wasn't because the
direction was so bad. And uh, I got
interested at that point in time that there must be
a better way to do this. And so I
decided to major in, in secondary education and learn
how to teach and I have to confess without telling
what school I went to that the courses I had
for some of the worst I ever had. I
couldn't believe it. Nobody talked about the question I
had about how to make it really work. I
learned all kinds of other things about public education,
but not how not how to really teach it effectively
. And uh, so I was about ready to
give up and I talked to one of my professors
, Jason Woodruff and I said, I, this
is not the right field for me, I get
to do something else. And he said, no
, you can do that or you could decide to
go get a graduate degree and make a difference in
the field. And I said well you know I
don't want to go through the usual uh you know
get a get administrative degree and go be a principle
for a while and then finally go back to school
after 10 years. And he said no no no
no no. He said right now there's N.
D. E. A. Fellowships available. This
was in 1960. He said there's NBA fellowships available
and uh you could probably funded to go to school
and here's some schools you might apply to. So
not being one to run away from a challenge.
I said okay I'll do that. And so I
applied and got accepted. I accepted the position of
the University of Illinois and Champagne or ban it because
they offered me the most money. The absolute long
reason to accept a graduate degree. But it turned
out very re serendipitously the wonderful professors there. And
so yeah and I'm sorry this story is a little
bit long but it answers your question and probably answer
some of the others we have here today. But
as I got ready to go to grad school I
got accepted. I was very excited about going to
school. I went to check with the registrar I
see if I was going to graduate, okay.
And they said oh no You're short two hours of
math credit because I have had an engineering degree early
on. So I had a math minor and it's
like major and I said Oh my God I haven't
had mathematics for four years, what what am I
gonna do, you know? So I tried to
find an online course. There wasn't any of those
days. Of course I tried to find a home
study course. There wasn't any of those days that
I can find all the courses in mathematics looked extremely
difficult. And I finally found of course I went
to the bookstore and found this little books only 96
pages long run by a guy named Li Bai.
And the book was called are the of course of
course was called uh a Math Math theory. I
think something like that. Anyway I said well maybe
I can take this course. I went to course
seven students in the course. The professor stood up
, elected the whole time. The end of the
first luxury said think about it. Is it?
How do you think about mathematics? I've always had
homework to do in mathematics. I said okay I
want to read the book again. It made no
sense. Whatever next lecture, same thing. He's
lectures for the whole hour and a half or whatever
it was and says think about it. I said
oh my gosh, after about four or five lectures
I still have no clue what's going on in this
class and I have no idea how we're gonna be
graded or what's going to happen. But we haven't
done anything except thinking and I didn't even do that
, I just read the book again. And so
I finally got the midterm exam and he got a
blue book and he had one question, he wrote
it on the board, invent a number system and
I said what, I have no idea how to
invent the number says, but true form. I
filled up the whole blue book uh picked it up
a couple of days later and it's a great read
out in front of it. And the only thing
that gave me any cause for confidence at all was
that there were seven F's. Every single student in
the class got an exercise. I'm not the dumbest
at least not indeed. Um anybody else. Uh
So now I'm getting really worried because my whole graduate
career is going down the tube on this command to
think about it. You know, like what am
I gonna do? The weeks are cutting down there
, I have it, this is the summer.
So I had about three or four weeks left.
Finally about toward the very end this semester. It
just kind of clicked. I said, oh my
gosh number systems are artificial, they're they're an invention
, they're not real, they're just some logical system
. It could be a lot of different things and
all of a sudden sort of said, well I
wonder if you've got read the book again and start
to make a little more sense. So finally he
got to the final exam and I thought okay,
either I got it or I don't and of course
obviously the final exam in exact same question, think
about it. You know, I said, I
mean or no, right, I didn't get a
number system, that was the final exam. So
I said oh my gosh. I said okay let
there be an oar and a rubber boot. And
I went on to describe a two element number system
like zeros and ones, but I used an orange
rubber boot instead of zeros and ones and brutal pictures
instead of writing stuff and I thought he was gonna
get a great laugh out and I'm gonna go sell
insurance or he's gonna think I've got it, that's
up. Anyway, I'm sorry for the link that
story, but it's important to answer your question.
And so I went on to grad school that never
again math is done I never have to do that
again. Now I'm going to fast forward about a
year. I'm having a terrible time in graduate school
because they got the same problem that I had an
undergraduate. Nobody's talking about what I wanted to talk
about. I'm down in the basement of the site
building running rats for crying out loud. And I
said that's not what I wanted to come to grad
school that was run rats. I want to learn
how to teach. This is driving me crazy.
Well b. F Skinner came to the campus about
that time and of course we all went to hear
him and I was way up in the back somewhere
and I don't remember much what he talked about but
I do remember two things at the end in the
question period. Somebody said dr Skinner in your book
. So and so he's a blah blah blah.
And tonight he said blah blah blah. And I
think there's a big disagreement between those two and Skinner
said hell, you think I believe everything I ever
wrote? Well that was a great revelation to me
. I said oh my gosh, here's this great
man who's saying he changed his mind. And up
until then I came from a little town. I
figured if you wrote it it was true, uh
certainly. And of course that's definitely not true.
But that was kind of the first revelation. The
second thing he said changed my career and is the
answer to your question or will lead to the answer
your question. He said, all I've tried to
do is make a very few assumptions and see how
much of human learning we can explain with very few
assumptions. And I said to myself, oh my
gosh, psychology is nothing but an order rubber boot
. It's an invention. Uh you know, and
so I went back to grad school with great enthusiasm
. The rest of my graduate career was exciting because
all I did was try to figure out what the
order rubber boots that these people are dealing with,
what was the assumptions they were making and how did
their theories work. And so I really got very
excited about theory. And uh, and I didn't
agree with him anymore. I didn't try to agree
them. I said they were all artificial anyway,
it doesn't matter. But it became fun and I
did okay. And I ended up with a PhD
. And so at age 27 I'm standing there saying
, I don't know anything and I have a PhD
you know what to do, okay, we fast
forward a few years and I had an opportunity to
, right, I think the first handbook of uh
it was uh it was a er a they came
out with an annual book anyway, uh somebody dropped
out at the last minute and somebody suggested my name
and I was invited to contribute an article that was
really quite a thrill for me. And so I
said, okay, wait a minute, how can
we do this? And I I thought about the
or and the rubber boots, and I said,
you know what, maybe we could invent an instructional
system, maybe we can make just a few assumptions
and see how far we could go. And so
we said, okay, well let's see if there's
just a few uh primary presentation forms now. Back
up just a little, my father was an artist
when I was growing up, I always wanted a
big box of France, he was poor. So
every time my birthday would come instead of getting a
big box of crayons, I get a grants.
And my dad would say you've got more than you
need to take red, yellow and blue and black
and draw a wonderful landscape on my paper to show
me you only needed for grants. Well that's stuck
in my mind. So I stopped and I said
okay, I want I want no more than four
basic things. And so we came up with some
esoteric words like expose it for a generality and so
uh expository incidents, inquisitorial generosity, quick story.
And then we said ok if we can take these
four things, these four primary presentation for us,
can we describe almost all instruction, whether it's live
can whatever with those four things and that became the
basis of what became component displayed theory. And so
you know, my primary focus from the time of
my mission, through those experiences has been how do
I make instruction effective, efficient engaging? Now I
guess one literal explanation. I call that now either
the third power that comes by an engineering background.
Uh and and the reason I did that, I
said we talked about E. Learning all the time
now. So this this formulation of the question really
is more recent than what I was aggressive. But
the we talked about E learning and I said the
E ought to be more than electronic, it ought
to mean effective, efficient engaging. And so I
said let's talk about the three instruction and That has
been my question from day one. It's my question
today. This is the book you just talked about
is the latest attempt to answer that question. Uh
I don't think it's the final answer. It's the
best I can do at this point in time.
Uh I have one hope for the book and that
is that it stimulates uh thought and discussion and that
people would disagree and that somebody else will come up
with a better or in a rubber boot. Very
interesting. We were talking the other day about your
early days, having our Burnett and communicating but not
really knowing what to do with it. And you're
one of the early pioneers in our field computer based
instruction and component display theory was almost early papers I
remember reading in grad school and kept with me several
times, referred to on um at the time I
remember reading those and you had big expectations for computer
based instruction Here. We are 40 years later from
when you started doing that work. Have your expectations
been met exceeded? Or have they failed? And
could you explain why? Yeah. Well, you
know, we, when we were working on Larry
stalder was my major professor. He was one of
the very, very, very early pioneers based instruction
. He wrote a book uh for uh I think
uh NSF uh and just little pamphlet called teaching machines
. And it was not about teaching machines that we
came to know them after Skinner. It was about
computer based instruction and he talked about uh it was
a very very uh it still is a very insightful
, nobody has yet built a system like he described
. Uh but I got involved in in computer based
instruction. As a graduate student. We had our
own computer. There's seven of us in the program
. We had our own 1620 computer. The 16
, by the way stands for 16K. of memory
and things as big as the desk. And it
was a card punch machine. The computer was fast
enough. It was the key punch machine that was
hard to get to. Um, so we were
playing around with computer based instruction. And uh the
very first system we worked on was called Socrates.
It was a rear projections uh microfilm reader that we
took this little computer and inserted in between the buttons
so that the computer control the moving of the film
rather than the buttons on the machine. It was
really include uh, I'm probably one of the three
dissertations that was done using that machine before it died
, enormous death. Uh, but We sit around
and it was costing us at that point in time
about almost$4-$5 per hour per student to just for
the machine time, let alone anything else, even
development time. And so we're debating will it ever
be cost effective to have a computer? Well,
I have in my pocket right now a phone that
has a 10,000 times more power than that machine had
. And uh you know, the, the technology
has just gone really crazy and really great. Uh
So, but we were thinking, we were saying
very star hero is a great visionary and we were
saying all instruction is going to be on the computer
here in just a few years. Uh In a
sense, uh that expectation has been realized. Uh
you know, I don't think there's anybody now anywhere
that's teaching whether live or not, that's not using
a computer in some way. We have learning management
system for everything. So in one sense, it
succeeded. Our expectation. We never could have anticipated
the energy, even though we were sitting playing with
our planet. We never, you know, I
wish I'd have written an after Tuesday. Uh,
but you know, it was, it was really
, we had this great vision of what was going
to happen in some ways. It's been very disappointing
because you look at the school's always saw session yesterday
with the show, the chairs all lined up straight
in the role. You know, it's pretty much
still the same today as it was then in some
ways, but in other ways, uh, we
online learning is very big without computers, this wouldn't
be happening. It's not computer assisted instruction as we
visualize it in those days, but it certainly is
computer based Computer affiliate or something here in computer helped
anyway. And so I think that the technology clearly
has exceeded our wildest imagination. My big disappointment is
that along with the technology, the underlying instructional theory
, the underlying instructional design does not get paste.
If anything. I think what we see now in
terms of online instruction is not as good as what
we were producing in the 70s and 80s in our
computer-based instruction, because we were spending a lot of
time on design and a lot of time on instructional
strategies and what's happening now, Is there anybody with
no experience at all? I can throw something on
the internet. I mean, it takes you two
minutes to put something on a website. There's all
kinds of sites that don't have to know any programming
. Just throw stuff up there and that's what happens
. And so we have a lot of stuff called
instruction, which I think really, really is poor
. Uh, so it's a mixed bag. You
know, on one side, I think that the
use of computers and education is far exceeded what any
of us could have imagined. And it's wonderful and
there's all kinds of tools and we get people writing
about all kinds of ways to use computers that To
help us. On the other hand, uh I
think my disappointment is not the technology, which I
think is just continues to go crazy. Uh I
think my biggest disappointment is the underlying instructional strategies in
theory has not progressed all that much. I mean
, we're still using some of the same instructional design
things uh there in what the 20th here, the
bestselling textbook that you and I are both trying to
be uh in the seventh edition and and the basic
underlying ideas have not changed mess. Now, I
tried to present a few new ideas in this book
, but I think that's my concern. I think
we have a lot to learn about the underlying strategies
and computers. You know, somebody yesterday said technology
doesn't deal with quoted steve job wrong or something anyway
, uh said computers don't or technology doesn't teach and
that's true and it's what's in it and it's how
we build it. So the strategy is underlying it
and I think we still have a long ways to
go. Okay. Uh could you describe your career
, your career path in terms of the different jobs
you've had over the years? Yeah, I can
do that. I already gave you the introduction.
Is that how I got on the path? I'm
on. My first job was at George Peabody College
in Nashville Tennessee. It was a separate university at
that point in time. It's now part of Vanderbilt
. That was a wonderful experience. I had an
opportunity to do research and only had to teach one
class this semester. So I started out in a
, you know, not all young assistant professors have
that opportunity to really start out in a research career
. So I played around a lot of ideas and
a lot of things at that point in time.
I went from George peabody to Brigham Young University where
I spent a year and at Brigham Young University,
I was in a program where they were playing around
with continuous progress, secondary education, you know,
let's not have courses, let's not have periods,
let's let students move at their own pace. A
very visionary man that I worked with there and that
was kind of a fun experience. And then I
had an opportunity to go to stanford. I went
to stanford as a visiting assistant professor which is three
notches below a graduate assistant uh at stanford University.
And I spent a year there uh in the in
the R. And D. Center on teaching and
but I wanted to be in the R. And
D. Center on computer based instruction, which was
Pat Supes and that was in a different group and
the two groups are sort of fighting with the resort
. I spent a year at stanford and then I
decided that I didn't want to have a career there
, much to the consternation of my chairman and dean
at stanford, he said I was hunting my career
to leave stanford, but I said, yeah,
I looked around the people that have been there their
whole career and they were still being treated as students
even though they had full professors, I don't want
to, there's too many big people, I want
to go somewhere. So I went back to BYU
and uh and that turned out to be a good
thing at that point in time. About a year
after I returned uh Darryl monsoon, who was an
assistant vice president, called me in his office said
I want you to start a media research department.
And I said I don't want to do media research
, I wanted your learning research, structural research.
And he said well what is that? And I
explain he's okay then started instructional research department and I
said okay so we started the center for what we
call it, I let the structural research and development
I think I. R. And D. And
uh he said here's the here's money for two full
time PhD level people, here's the full time secretary
and here's a chunk of money uh to get you
started well as a young guy system professor I couldn't
turn that down. I said this is fantastic.
And we started the program at Brigham Young University and
Harvey Black and I, along with others who are
there uh began the program that's still going at BYU
uhh and uh that was a fun part of my
career, I harvey and I talked about that as
the Camelot. We had a wonderful time doing and
some of our students turned out to be some of
the leaders, charlie Rangel, everybody knows it's a
graduate of that program, bob Henderson is a graduate
program and numerous others, those are probably best known
in our field, but numerous others. So that
was a really fun experience. As in Camelot,
there's always something that happens that kind of destroys the
beauty of Camelot. And uh in my case that
was the case as well, I will go with
the details of that. But I decided that big
um university would no longer meet my needs and I
left first worked for of course where inc a company
that we had started to do its special design.
I was the R. And D. Director vice
president of that company for a few years. And
then I moved to California where that company had located
and uh realized being in management, realized I had
not paid much attention to the books before I was
I was doing the R. And D. And
they were down there running the company and when I
got down and I start to look at the books
and I said, we're breaking up, we're gonna
be gone. And so I got really nervous and
uh I called Dick Clark who is at the U
. S. C. At the time. And
I said, Dick, I need I need an
academic appointment and so give me a job at USC
. And he said, okay, I'll work on
it for the next couple of years. And I
said no I have to have a by september.
And he said Dave this is us, see you're
not going to get a job by september no matter
what I said somebody sitting on a position, find
me a position in there and I'll come in his
assistant visiting professor or something which happened which is a
miracle really. I went into the curriculum introduction department
much to their consternation and only reasons to Dean looked
at my resume and said whoa this guy's really productive
we wanted and he told him you will take him
. And so that was kind of uncomfortable fit.
But I had a good time, wonderful people that
I worked with and then the next year was moved
over into the its technology department there at us.
So I stayed there for nine years, had a
great experience there in L. A. Uhh.
But then I told my who actually, because I
couldn't live in L. A. With all my
kids, had six kids. We lived clear down
in Orange County. And I was commuting as I
told people to to five hours a day, I
said, this is not going to work. And
so um so I told my, I got to
find another position and she's all don't resign anyway.
About that time, I was offered a opportunity to
go to Utah State University. Uh And uh I
told him there's no way I'm going to Utah state
. I've been here on a site visit. I
know what your salaries are and I'm not gonna accept
that kind of a salary. And so uh but
they persuaded and played it and they did a very
tricky thing. They had to give a talk.
And there were about 25 doctoral students and I've never
seen that many doctors students in one room and every
one of them had read every paper I'd written the
last three or four years. And the questions were
fantastic for about two hours. It was the single
best presentation I've ever seen. And they really have
prompted. And that sort of, It took me
and I said, Oh well I found out that
that drag graduate students in that graduated everybody but me
. But anyway, I decided to go to Utah
state and I spent the next 17 years then at
Utah state, also a wonderful experience. I love
Logan, loved it there. Um, and that's
uh, I had an opportunity then to go serve
as a missionary for the mormon Church. Now our
missionary, just postulating uh, a senior person retirement
age person, there's all kinds of opportunities to serve
. And in my case they said, we want
you to go to BYU Hawaii and we want to
help the faculty courses online, which is right down
my alley. That's why I said great. And
so I wanted to do that. But my dean
said no, we're not going to give you a
lead. I want to leave and want to come
back. And he said, no, we can't
give you leave to do that. Uh, and
I said, I'm doing educate well though it's a
religious assignment. I can't do that. And I
said, okay, thank you very much, been
a pleasure working here. And I retired had Utah
state. I went then to BYU Hawaii. I
spent two years there and then I came back after
that experience at, we've been home for about four
or five months. Well, I actually, when
I came back florida State University said we want you
to florida state, I said, I don't want
to live in florida, but I said I would
be, I would consider a semester a year.
And so they, they gave me a appointment for
three winter semesters. And so the first one I
went to florida and it had a great experience down
there, loved it. It was great thrill for
me to actually be a florida state find because they
had such a good reputation. And so I taught
there for a semester and then I went home and
just after I got home I got a call from
the new president of BYU Hawaii saying we want you
to come back for two more years. And so
we debated in january. We went back to starting
under two year term, unfortunately only lasted a year
because I had a serious heart attack at the end
of the first year and they decided I better go
home. But I spent another year, and since
that time I continued to teach classes at BYU Hawaii
. In the meantime, I got acquainted the University
of Hawaii. So I talked last university, y
I continued my assignment at florida state teaching online and
by then I was pretty hooked at teaching online.
And I've taught a class at least every semester online
since that time, in addition to writing and doing
some other consulting. So I think that a lot
of people that need a different retirement manual that you
read about, uh my neighbor knows about retirement.
He plays golf every day all day that I can
do that either. So what do I do now
is think back and you touched on this a little
bit about your early research interests and maybe just put
some of those more, what were your aspirations when
you get started? I've indicated what got me into
the fields to try to find out how to be
effective teacher. And I really, you know,
unlike a lot of, a lot of students that
I know kind of go from this to this.
I tried a lot of things and you know,
it got involved with designing computer based instruction systems.
Even at one point in time, I invented a
computer language for running robots for kids. Uh,
was an opportunity was kind of the farthest field that
we have. But underlying all this, I really
have had one question and it's been, I think
probably help my career. I'm not sure what everybody
ought to do, but I really have not floundered
around very much trying to find what to do.
I tried different things, but all of them,
we're focused on the same idea. How can I
really make construction really effective, How can I really
teach in a really effective way? I wish I
knew the answer. Uh I think the book is
closed, but uh at least the best I can
do at this point in time. Uh And I
think I think what I've written there will help.
It's a very detailed how to do it manually,
but and I'm happy With the answer that I finally
came up with that for 50 years. Uh but
as I told people, I wish now that I
was just getting my degree as 26 and knew what
I knew and had written this book and was starting
from there because now I know what I would like
to do with my career and you can do seven
edition and I could see, yeah, I could
yeah, it's not gonna last for seven editions probably
at this point in time. So really I've been
pretty straight focus the whole time. And you know
, I've had to teach other things once in a
while because your college professor and I haven't always had
my body experience where I got to do with whatever
I wanted. But for the most part, my
career has been in research universities. I've had usually
one class a semester I've rarely taught to. Once
I taught three, that was pretty rare for me
. So I've had a research appointment most of my
career and that's been Wonderful opportunity to write and do
research. Now. We've done a lot of things
. We went through$5 million dollars worth of have
money from a company in Germany when we try to
design what my students called the moon shaw, we
try to design it an intelligent computer based instruction system
. And uh we made some progress on that before
that company went bankrupt. Not because of us because
somebody else. And so uh you know we've got
a lot of different things but in all of those
things in inventing a computer system and designing uh I
. D. Expert all of it has been focused
on how do we how do we make construction effective
? I've been very interested in computer based instruction.
I think that it's much more powerful than people.
Talk about somebody yesterday made some comment about oh I
guess it was filling a session. I was said
you know computers can never be really personal. And
I said well go read the media equation where it
talks about the computer is going to have personality.
There's a lot of things I don't think we've even
started to scratch the surface with the potential of this
fantastic tool. But again, my interest has not
been in the tool per se, but always in
what's the strategies that we can implement with this tool
? And if we don't have the right strategies,
it doesn't. Okay. You mentioned earlier that you
had your ah ha moment when Skinner indicated that he
changed his mind. Is there a place in your
career where you had a similar shift may be either
major or minor in terms of the way you were
approaching internal effectiveness? Not not to change my direction
. Um There there and maybe that's another question later
, but there were people and experiences that really changed
my direction. Ir Skinner was probably the first big
hot inside. Uh my my mentor Darryll Munson at
BYU when he asked me to start the media researcher
, construction research department, he was a fantastic person
. And one of my other ah ha moments is
uh he said, you know the church has a
lot of money BYU by the way is the church
sponsored in mormon church sponsored school. And he said
the church has a lot of the money they put
out for doing research in our area. And he
said, yeah, I need you to, this
is very early. I just started working with him
, he said I need you to write a proposal
so that we can get some of this money.
And so he mentored me a little about how to
write the proposal. And I did and I took
it to him and he said no, no,
no. So about three weeks back and forth,
you know, each thursday I met with him and
finally about the third week he said, okay,
that's good, we've got it, I'll take it
to the vice president, will sign off the picture
. And so I go into the next thursday anxious
to hear what happened. And he said what happened
? He so he said no, he said,
he said no. He said yeah, he said
no, we're not gonna do that. Shut up
my tail between my legs, started leaving obviously.
Where you going? I said, well, what
what's next? He said, I didn't say we
were going to do it. I just said the
vice president said no. And I said, well
if the vice president said no then how we can
do it. And he said you and I know
I know is not the right answer. Well that
became my mantra for the rest of my career because
I learned from that and and we went back and
rewrote the proposal and the next time we submitted exactly
the same but much rewritten and he said what you
didn't realize is that you have to figure out when
the man is in charge, who's in charge,
what his interest is. You wrote this in terms
of Iraq, we need to right now in terms
of his interest. And that was a great lesson
to me and I learned from him. There's three
things you need to get money. You need to
know who writes the checks. You need to know
what his passion is and then you need to write
your proposal in terms of his passion and if you
do that, you'll always get the money. And
so that was a big turning point Micro. And
that made a big difference because I wrote a lot
of proposals after you. So that was, that
was a big change. So no, it's not
the right answer became the next person. That also
was a vice president at Utah State University. I
had a very large contract from the military and,
and I've done several small contracts with them and that
we finally got the point where we have happened was
large for me. Half a million dollars. Not
large anymore, but half a million dollar contract.
And, and my project monitored with just go ahead
and start with this and I'll get the paperwork to
. So I hire people. We started on the
project and the paperwork is not coming. And so
, and I told my, uh, and so
the university's old you astronomy, but you have your
department that will have to guarantee this. So I
told you once made in my environment, I said
, it's a sure deal Don, we're going to
get the money. So just, you know,
you won't lose anything. He said, Boy,
I sure hope so because it's about I'm into this
about$80,000 right now and I can't afford that out
of the department budget. And I said, No
, not to worry. Well now is the time
goes on. The time goes on. I kept
calling this guy. Where's our paper workers are paper
? The university started to scream at me. Where's
our paperwork? I went to a conference was a
R A. T. I sat down and had
lunch people, you know, he said, I'll
have it to you next week. So I called
him and he said, Dave, I hate to
tell you this, but we've decided not to fund
it. I've been going for six months. I've
had three people working full time for six months and
I'm in about$80,000 into our, into our things
even more than that. And I said, you
can't do this. I thought my career's over,
I'm done, Utah state they're going to fire me
right on the spot. I don't know what to
do. I went for a long walk the morning
after that. I was really beside myself. I
figured, you know, they're going to take it
out of my salary. Who's, what they're gonna
do? You know? I know, I knew
the department could afford and so somebody said, well
you need to go see bar Jensen is the research
vice president. So you're kidding me. That's the
last person I want to see. I just lost
$100,000 or more for the university. You want me
to say no, no, no, you need
to see. So hesitantly. I made appointment and
he said, I'll meet you for lunch today for
lunch. And he said, he started the conversation
by saying, I understand you need a little money
. And I said, well I don't know what
I need. But I said I know that they
backed out on my contract after giving me verbal okay
. And he said he says how much do you
need? Well I had really he said work it
out and be in my office at 8:00 AM.
And so I went, you know, so I
did, I said well I like to keep these
two guys at a higher full time on and I'd
like to, you know, I need a little
bit. And so I went and handing the budget
and I said uh you know, I don't haven't
got any other prospects, I don't know where I'm
going to find. And he said why do you
think we hired you? You're going to find the
money. It's not a big deal. He said
here's the account number. Use this until you get
into the contract to cover. And so, uh
, and I learned from, from talking to other
people that that was his modus operandi. He,
you know, he was a guy that believed in
making this happen. So that was, that was
the third kind of really helpful thing in my career
. So I don't know if they haven't answered your
question, but those are they were they weren't,
they weren't, they weren't conceptualized as they were more
mentoring me in, in how to be a researcher
, how to be a scholar. Ah they really
help. Those are two of the people have really
made a big difference in my life because then I
went back with enthusiasm and confidence and move forward.
So sure, Okay, well over the last 50
years you've seen a lot of you've seen our field
evolved from the very beginning to where we are today
. Could you identify, I don't know, 3
45 ideas or trends that have you seen major impacts
in our field? Absolutely graduate school. The first
two years of behaviorism, they were died in the
world behaviors. I worked with Richard Anderson is on
my committee. Richard Anderson adjusted as a brand new
assistant professor come from Harvard working the skinner. He
was diagnosed with skin area at that time. He
evolved out of that after everything was behaviorism. I
remember one of the assignments I had was to to
work out how somebody learns the concept green with s
our bonds. It was a terrible excitement, which
today I stopped no clue. So that was very
big. But at the same time, David Ausubel
was on my committee. David Ausubel was, I
don't know how to characterize him. Exactly. It's
really esoteric guy. But you know, he did
the what he called the psychology of meaningful learning or
something that was very influential. And so and cognitive
psychology was just coming in. So I was right
. My graduate program was right on the crust for
behaviorism was right at its peak and dying. And
in cognitive psychology was coming along. Bang, he's
look, I read the the conditions of learning and
manuscript. One of my professors was a reviewer for
that. Before the 1st 1965 version was published.
And he handed to me to read that was my
beginning. My relationship with bob Junior, who is
the other greatest implanting communities that later. And I
wrote bob Gonyea. And I said, you just
wrote the book I wanted to write in my career
and he said, are you coming to a P
. A. That was somewhere. And I said
yes. And he said then meet me for lunch
. So I was my first opportunity to have a
one on one. He came he was one of
the three people listened to my presentation on my dissertation
and stayed after for about an hour and visited with
me and that started our friendship and relationship. Um
So I forgot the question that uh oh so that
was the first the first big trend was to watch
the evolution from behaviors and two cognitive approach. two
wild man constructivism. It's not a leveled off a
little now. I'm not quite so crazy. But
I went through all of that in my own my
own kind of theoretical position. I always told people
I try to tiptoe through the ISMs. I tried
not to identify myself as a behaviorist or as a
constructivist or at certain constructivist there. Or even a
cognitive psychologist. I said I'm more interested in the
underlying principles, not the theoretical explanation at that level
. The psychology certainly interested theoretical explanations, but not
. So that was one big tree in terms of
the technology. Uh Everybody had a video lab,
video studio when I that was right. The height
of educational television. It was really big at the
time I got my degree and shortly thereafter, so
everybody had television that was kind of a big shortly
after that we had teaching machines that kind of came
and went before you blink your eye. But I
was very big in teaching machines. I actually built
a homemade teaching machine that I use for several research
studies in church puberty. Uh And so I was
very, I thought that was a very good way
to go. Obviously my dissertation was on the Socrates
system, which was a computer based teaching machine.
Um, so I was very fascinated by that whole
idea and still am. But, but that's involved
the technology. It just goes, you know,
crazy every week now there's a new thing. So
, uh, so I've seen that evolution and its
involvement. Um, I think those are the two
biggest changes in terms of uh, what affected me
. Uh, the theoretical change never really affected me
much. I haven't really changed much my orientation.
Uh, I always smile when people characterize and critique
. My work is behaviorist and then somebody else at
the same time, the same work critiques it is
, is cognitive and nobody is well. No,
that's not true. David Jonathan bless his heart.
He's not doing well. But David Jonathan responded to
one of my first papers I gave on on the
problem senate instruction and that was a fun experience because
I presented the paper and David always we always were
sparring over constructed that. So David stood up as
discussed it and he said, I don't know what
to say. I've never David johnson quiet. I
don't know what to say about Dave. He said
he's a born again constructive. He said, I
find myself agreeing with him and it's extremely uncomfortable.
And so so I've been characterized constructivist. But from
my own point of view, yeah, I've just
kind of concentrate on what works and what are the
underlying things. And can we come up with instructional
principles of prescriptions that aren't necessarily uh derived from some
theoretical position, although you could probably explain them for
any theoretical position. So, uh, you know
, I tried to stay there as far as the
technology is concerned. I love to tinker like everybody
else. But I've tried very, very hard and
very deliberately not to get too involved with the technology
per se. Aside from the fact that we invented
to machines and computer based. But my role in
both of those projects was the underlying strategies involved the
ticket system which we invented early on at BYU.
And in fact just like it was evolving at the
same time that we built that system. So my
contribution that system was that had built an instructional strategies
had a real example practice strategy built in and we
had a learner control off strategy which was completely was
it still is a completely novel I did has not
been developed uhh later when we worked on I.
T. Expert that it wasn't really a computer based
destruction system. All that we built that into it
. The whole idea was could we build in structural
design into an expert system that would guide designers by
assignment to do good instructional design? So it's sort
of intellectual leverage. So my emphasis always been on
the underlying strategy. Okay, um what are some
of the key ideas and the key people that have
influenced your career and how do they affect? You
? Already talked about the administrators and if this is
my career, I suppose that the scholar that absolutely
most influenced my career certainly robert again. Um As
I indicated, I read the conditions of learning 65
edition in manuscript before it was published, I had
a conversation with bob. Can ye right. I
mean, just before it was published and and had
some correspondence with him after. I never was a
student of his, we never ever worked together.
I think he saw me as a the critic of
his for a while. Uh we uh, but
his eye, his conditions of learning I thought was
inspired. I thought it was right on. I
still do, I think that that that whole idea
that there are different kinds of learning I think was
kind of a key to my own thinking and uh
obviously component display theory and even now in first principles
, I've retained that categories of learning as a way
of thinking about the world. Uh yeah, later
on I when I went to Utah State University in
1989, I think it was we invited Bob young
yet to come for a conversation. They wanted to
have a debate and I wouldn't do it. I
said I won't do a debate Bob. Can you
have a conversation? That's all on video. I
was gonna ask you about that. I was worried
about the background behind I remember both of you throwing
over transparency. That's right. That's right. We
, it is an interesting setting because we were both
sitting in a, in an easy chair and both
had an overhead transparency, but we were close enough
to each other we could reach and touch each other
. So we're sitting like this, the overheads were
here And we had an audience of almost 200 people
and they videoed the whole thing And then they edit
the video very carefully. There there are 4 90
minute videos of that. There's an all day deal
. Uh, we later published a series of seven
articles and that technology based on that conversation. But
as I told Marcy Driscoll yesterday any because he was
asking about that series, I said any resemblance between
the technology papers and what we actually said is queens
. And because bob edited them very carefully, but
he ended. Things have really changed in March.
Um, but that was, that was kind of
a highlight of my career. I really enjoyed that
conversation. And I think in the second video there's
a place in there where bob was. The first
video is kind of a confrontational a little bit.
And the second video, I made some comments and
he said he reached over and touched my knee and
said, you don't really disagree with me. I
said, I said that my bob got the impression
that good. I said no bob. All I've
ever tried to do is to say what you said
or should have said and he said, oh you
got carried away in the last category. Uh but
from that point on he and I were the closest
of friends now, we did collaborate as much as
I like. We did get together after that at
the American Institute of Science and American Academy of Science
in Washington. And we spent five days six hours
a day talking just the two of us in a
room with a monitor and a recorder. I have
all those audiotapes. Unfortunately there was a bad connection
and all those are terrible, terrible tapes are very
hard to hear, but I have them all still
. Uh That was a very again, one of
the really highlight weeks of my life. So bob
certainly had tremendous and I was trying to influence him
at that point as well as they try to influence
. Uh And and out of that came the paper
that we wrote together called uh Reno used the word
enterprise, which is not caught on nobody's using it
. Uh But I was I was pleased because when
Rita Richie put together uh that little synopsis of bob's
life uh and he reviewed it, he insisted that
that article being put in. So I thought that
was a good compliment to me. So probably the
single most influential person in my career. Certainly my
major professor started me down the path of thinking about
how to build computer based instruction systems and the one
lecture he gave which I still have the notes for
. Yeah, probably set the path of my involvement
in designing computer based instruction systems and things. But
again, that's been a secondary in food, a
secondary thing. So those probably two people plus the
few administrators I mentioned probably had the most influence clearly
. You know, you you got to give a
lot of credit to your wife in my case wife
because my first wife passed away. First wife is
extremely supportive, very encouraging. My second wife is
the one that got me to write the book,
says the first book. He said, you're writing
a book. I don't see you write it,
you're not getting any better. And that kind of
spurred me on to get it done. So I
they've been very influential but probably not from the academic
side. What would you consider your greatest professional career
accomplishment? The first principle of instruction, 20 years
to get there, took 50 years to get there
. And I finally got to put that. Well
you've had other books, you had the two versions
on the concept learning. Yeah, yeah, that's
right concept learning that bob tennis and I worked on
early on. We uh, certainly the Chinese Elaboration
Theory. Uh that started with a lecture that I
gave uh extemporaneous lecture, actually, some of our
best. Yeah, absolutely, I think so.
And uh, so I think I guess the best
accomplishment. I've had the opportunity to work with outstanding
students. And I guess more than what I might
have done personally, uh am I am proud of
the students that I've had that went on to become
really leaders in this field. That we mentioned a
couple. I bet there are many others. And
I think I had many opportunities to go work for
private industry was offered a lot of money. You
don't make a lot of money as a college professor
. I don't know if you've noticed that. Uh
uh and I turned them all down and I remember
one, she, some headhunter called me on the
phone and we talked for about an hour and,
and I ask all about the position and the people
were, and I just find as much as I
could when I got done that, I said,
well, I don't think I can accept the position
. And she said, well, you didn't even
ask me about salary. I said oh what's the
salary? And she said well it's six figures and
the first one is not a one. And I
said oh and then I couldn't possibly accept it.
And she said well I don't think I can get
any more than that. I said no no that's
not the problem is too much. I said if
somebody offered me that much money, I think they're
gonna they think they can tell me what to do
. And I said, No one tells me what
to do, not even for$200,000. So she
was quite shocked. But I was quite sincere.
I mean I made a joke but I was quite
sincere. I stayed at the university because of the
students I'm still teaching. Uh Not because I make
anybody because I'm teaching you that joke. You know
what that's like I'm teaching because I love that opportunity
to interact with students. I like to see people
who say aha. Uh you know, I look
forward to those students that really catch on and really
go. Uh and so I suppose the greatest accomplishment
of all is the opportunity I've had to mentor really
right people. And and I hope, you know
that I said the book as far as my own
personal expression of what I've tried to learn. Obviously
I tried to put into this what I've heard it
is kind of a accumulation of whatever. Uh huh
. And I know I'm not gonna make any money
if I keep telling my wife, she said,
I hope you make a lot of money. Said
don't spend any uh you know, it's like it's
an academic book honey. You know, there there
may be 2000 people in this field. It might
sell that many, but that would really be unlikely
. Uh but I said, but my my hope
is not money. I didn't write for money.
I have written shades of grey or something. I
wouldn't have. Uh but uh but my hope is
that I've presented ideas in a way that triggers thought
in the next generation of graduate students and that because
they're probably the ones that get, get to read
this and that if I if I have stimulated people's
ability to continue to work into research and figure this
thing out, continue to search the answer to the
question that I had, then I will felt like
that my career is a success and that's my major
thing. I you know, otherwise the rest of
it's all superficial. Well, in 10 years when
we're too old to correct to make it to a
ct how do you want this next generation to remember
? Uh I don't know. I suppose I remember
me how they remember me, but I hope I've
tried always to be a, you know, kind
I hope that I haven't been seen as unkind or
uh you know, I have definitely been on the
side of the student. Uh huh. You know
, we've gone through, I can't even remember how
many dissertation defenses and my orientation has always been to
be on the side of the student. I've always
told my students, I'm not letting you go into
that exam until life because you're ready. And when
you get into exam, if somebody gets out of
line and starts to push you into a corner,
uh your backup, I won't say anything unless I
have to, but if I have to, I
will and there have been occasions when I do so
, I hope from that standpoint, I've been a
good mentor to the students I've worked with. I
hope that the students have had classes with me,
found something that triggered in them, a desire to
go on and be creative. I told this story
yesterday to a group of john curry students and I
think it kind of characterizes my goal for students.
I was giving a lecture and all right, there's
a small class that was at USC and somebody asked
a question and I thought about for a minute.
I went to the blackboard and drew a flow chart
to answer the question. I don't even know who
it was, but and a woman sitting over here
said, where did you get that as experience?
Where did you get that photo? And I said
, I don't know. I just thought it was
a good way to ask the question. You mean
you just made that up? And I said well
I have thought about that way. But yeah,
I guess I just made it. Oh she slammed
her books. That I have never been so insulted
in my life. I've never been to class.
Somebody just makes up. She stormed out of the
room. Well, I'm taking back my students are
all embarrassed. Uhh and after I recovered I said
, what does she think things come from? I
said the bible says Adam named the animals, but
I didn't read any where he talked about instructional design
. So I said put somebody has to make stuff
up. I said so why not me? But
I said more importantly to my glass, why not
you? I said, I think one of the
greatest problems we have in our graduate program is we
do not encourage students to make stuff up. We
need more people to take their ideas and run with
them and push them and say, I think I
can do this as bad as these big guys.
Uh, you know, you and I both know
we're not that smart, you know, I know
about you, but I'm not, you know,
we've produced some stuff, we've written some stuff,
Uh, but you know, I don't know a
whole lot more now about that question than I did
50 years ago, a little bit. Uh,
certainly have some ideas and enthusiastic that I push those
ideas. But deep in my core, I say
, I don't think we know the answers. I
and so for me, I hope that if nothing
else, I've been a stimulus for other people to
think and to push and to move forward. So
that's what I would hope. Very good. Thank
you very much. Thank you. It's been a
pleasure. Yes. Okay. Yeah.