Heinich is best known for his contribution to the fields of
instructional design and
instructional technology. He promoted a
technocratic approach to schooling, an approach where technology specialists would decide when and where technology would be used. Henrich made attempts to simplify the field of educational technology, as he believed that the 1963 definition by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) was too complicated. Heinich had discovered a generalizable principle about educational technology, that its visibility was always distinct from instruction with visual materials. Heinich, Michael Molenda of
Indiana University, and James D. Russell of
Purdue University created the ASSURE Model for teaching. The name is an acronym which stands for: •
Analyse Learners; •
State Objectives; •
Select Methods, Media and Materials; •
Utilize Methods, Media and Materials; •
Require Learner Participation; and •
Evaluate and Revise. In an interview for the AECT's History Makers Project, Heinich stated that the ASSURE model was his idea. According to Heinich, the model "incorporates
Robert Gagne's Events of Instruction to assure effective use of media in instruction". The purpose of this model was to guide the integration of technology into school curriculum in the most effective way and it gained mainstream popularity for its popularity among educators. The ASSURE model was first mentioned in “Instructional Media: The New Technologies of Instruction by authored by Robert Heinich, Molenda, and Russel Model of Instructional Design, which Heinich won two awards for. In later editions of the book, authors Sharon Smaldina and Deborah Lowthers also became associated with the model, defining it as an instructional system or guideline that teachers can use to develop lesson plans that integrate the use of technology and media. The distinguishing feature of this model was that it was focused on planning and conducting instruction that incorporated media. According to many evaluators such as Kent Gustafson of the ERIC Clearinghouse, the model was also easy to understand and apply to classroom learning.
Research into the use of the ASSURE • The Adaptation of a Residential Course to Web-Based Environment for Increasing Productivity by Tuzun et al. (2016) • Experiences from the Process of Designing Lessons with Interactive Whiteboard: ASSURE as a Road Map by Bahar Baran (2010) • An application of ASSURE model to solve contextual problems in virtual classroom proceedings by Lopez-Betancourt, A. & Garcia Rodriguez, M.L. (2015) • Developing a Pre-Service Teachers' Capacity of TPACK Integration by Designing a Math Lesson with ASSURE Model by Hsing-Wen Hu (2015) == Awards ==