The roots of instructional design can be traced back to behavioral psychology and B.F. Skinner. According to Skinner, a stimulus triggers a response and, if we could shape that response, we could achieve a desired change in behavior. Rewards, positive or negative, were key in shaping the behavior, which led to some interesting and nasty psychological experiments. Skinner, for example, was notorious for keeping his daughter in a boxed-in area for most of her youth so he could control her environment. And my kids thought I was tough!

Of course, the theory behind learning has advanced to include my favorite vein, constructivism, but when you dissect any typical course, you can see those behavioral roots peeking out. Repetition, frequent feedback, and more repetition are the forensic clues to a behavioral model of design.

Now consider this: When Skinner was first developing his theories in the late 1940s and '50s, the U.S. population was about half what it is today, computers and copiers barely existed and Sony Corp. was getting its start in Japan selling cutting-edge learning technology--a tape recorder weighing almost 40 pounds with tape made of rice paper.

Even though the world has changed dramatically in terms of the information available, the ways we dish out learning have changed little. Many of the courses delivered via eLearning are simply rote learning digitized, which explains why so many people rate eLearning as their least-preferred mode. So much of it is just plain boring. The gems that capture our imaginations and engage us are lumped into an ugly category ruled by page turners and insipid questions or obtuse content.

Instructional designers--the people who develop learning content--are wrestling with changes in the world that include an overload of information, the ability to access endless content with only a mouse click, and the diverse needs of a global audience. The theorists are still catching up to this new world, forcing the practitioners to experiment and test their way through the changes caused by technology, globalization, and the information explosion. One of the most-watched videos on YouTube covers these forces with some interesting tidbits. Did you know that a week's worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century?

Our instructional designers (IDs) at Sun are on the leading edge of thinking about how to leverage technology and how to sort between what needs to be delivered in a traditional course format versus what knowledge can be accessed through other means. Is the role of an ID now to understand the context of the learner and organize their access to relevant content and skills development in the most effective way, which is a much broader role than figuring out how to teach a specific topic? Will IDs be responsible for identifying more clearly what expertise looks like and offering multiple routes to achieve that expertise, rather than a one-size-fits-all option? If yes, it could mean a far less structured route than traditional methods but could also mean a very interesting path of innovation.

The journey has begun.