Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT)

Situating Merrill’s view of instructional designDesign theory and practice in the “cognitive revolutionCognitive revolution” pervasive from the 1960s to the 1980s, this technical chapter highlights several key essays on the distinctions between ID1ID to ID2 and the development ofInstructional transactions Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT)Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT) that emerged as Merrill’s principal research agenda during the 1990s. This primary shift in learning and instructional theory was accompanied by the design of an intelligent computer assisted instructional (ICAI)Intelligent Computer Assisted Instructional (ICAI) model facilitating integrative approaches to learning based on cognitive learning principles and expanding technological capacities to provide for multi-dimensional modes of learning that became theoretically conceivable and practically within reach at least as a longer-range prospect. At the center of Merrill’s ITTInstructional Transaction Theory (ITT) computer-assisted model was a built-in knowledge baseKnowledge base of a given topic, problem, or set of tasks, consisting of a multiplicity of dimensions, and a set of learner-guided instructional resources enabling students to activate the learning processesProcesses needed to master the given material. The developed system was empowered by a set of instructional transactionsInstructional transactions that enabled students to focus their directed energies on highly specific aspects of problems or tasks that need to be resolved within various learning processesProcesses to succeed in mastering the larger objectives of a given instructional program.