Marcus Childress, professor of instructional design and technology, is the newest president of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. AECT is an international nonprofit association of educators and other professionals who aim to improve the communication of instruction through technology.
“AECT members are (the) ‘who’s who’ members in our field,” Childress said. “The people who make up our association wrote a great deal of the literature in the field in instructional design and technology.”
Childress, who is also chair of the department of instructional design and technology, succeeds Ana Donaldson, former associate professor of instructional design at the University of Iowa.
The organization is governed by a 19-member board composed of Childress; Donaldson; Stephen Harmon, the president-elect; Ellen Hoffman, the executive secretary; the presidents of AECT’s 10 divisions; two “at-large” members; an affiliates representative; the ethics committee chair and a representative of the Educational Communications and Technology Foundation.
Childress was named president during the 2012 AECT International Convention from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3 in Louisville, Ken.
Among students who attended the convention were Seung Gutsch and Daphne Tseng, graduate students in the instructional design and technology program. Gutsch and Tseng were part of a team that competed against other universities in a hypothetical scenario in which teams had to come up with a solution to a problem involving a major energy company strike.
“We were the only non-doctorate students there,” Gutsch said.
Emporia State currently only offers a master’s of science program for instructional design and technology.
“It was challenging, but the classes (at ESU) well-prepared us for the competition,” Tseng said. “The instructional design and technology program is really hands-on stuff, and the competition showed us how it all came together as we went through the process.”
The date for the 2013 AECT convention is set for Oct. 29 through Nov. 2 in Anaheim, Calif.
