People come to the process with varying degrees of knowledge, skills, and abilities. It is the task of the instructional developers to help faculty develop a course which is a comfortable fit between their needs and interests, their pedagogical goals, available course-creation tools, and their skills and abilities. Development is a social process . I like to think of the Zone of Proximal Development as describing the difference between what I can do by myself and what I can do with a little help from my friends. The goal of this work is to develop a community of technology users and learners, and to create a climate where it is easy to work with technology because ideas abound.
Development is a constructive process .
In order to understand what they are doing, learners develop mental models to explain the phenomena they observe. If the model falls short of explaining observable phenomena, learners refine or revise the model. As such, development requires learners to move from specifics to generalities and back again. Thus, it is not sufficient simply to supply a faculty member with a technological solution for a particular pedagogical problem. Course and faculty development thus must proceed in a context that is open to free inquiry and the sharing of information.