Handbook of Design in Educational Technology

Rosemary Luckin, Sadhana Puntambekar, Peter Goodyear, Barbara L Grabowski, Joshua Underwood, Niall Winters, Rosemary Luckin, Sadhana Puntambekar, Peter Goodyear, Barbara L Grabowski, Joshua Underwood, Niall Winters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415807357
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135118952
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Handbook of Design in Educational Technology provides up-to-date, comprehensive summaries and syntheses of recent research pertinent to the design of information and communication technologies to support learning. Readers can turn to this handbook for expert advice about each stage in the process of designing systems for use in educational settings; from theoretical foundations to the challenges of implementation, the process of evaluating the impact of the design and the manner in which it might be further developed and disseminated.

The volume is organized into the following four sections: Theory, Design, Implementation, and Evaluation.

The more than forty chapters reflect the international and interdisciplinary nature of the educational technology design research field.

Part I
Foundations

Introduction

Peter Goodyear

The Chapters

The chapters in this section of the handbook combine to provide some foundational ideas that can be used for thinking about design for technology-enhanced learning.

Ertmer, Parisio and Wardak provide a timely review of empirical research into how design gets done—who is involved, and how their goals, methods and contexts affect the processes of design for learning. It provides a useful overview of design, as well as a launchpad into an active, widely dispersed literature.

Keppell and Riddle open up a neglected dimension of design: work on innovative learning spaces. They use two case studies to explain how design principles can be used to align pedagogy and place. They also introduce the complicating but unavoidable challenges that arise when design needs to help with the integration of the material world, digital technologies and modern pedagogy.

Luckin, Clark and Underwood build on ideas of space, environment and situated activity in outlining the Ecology of Resources framework for design. The ‘materialist turn’ in educational research is broadening appreciation of the significance of networks of tools and artefacts in shaping human activity, including study activities. Luckin’s model shows how complex learning environments can be subjected to analysis—to distinguish the many entities that affect learning—and how such analysis can inform and improve subsequent design work.

Reimann presents the theoretical roots of Design-Based Research and discusses how and when to apply the method in an aim to ‘shed light on the processes through which technology gets interpreted and appropriated by teachers and learners’. This work highlights the importance of authentic educational settings and identifying the ‘real needs’ that technology should serve. A particularly interesting aspect of this work is the emphasis upon developing learning trajectories as an essential step in the design process.

Griffin, Bui and Care draw on major, contemporary efforts to define and assess ‘21st-century’ capabilities to sketch some links between assessment of learning and design for learning. Combining criterion-referenced assessment of learning with Rasch modelling, the authors are able to show how actionable information about what students can do can be elicited and employed to (re)direct teaching. Design for learning needs to be able to design in opportunities for assessment.

Knowing what students are ready to learn can make a huge difference to pedagogical decisions—whether they are made by a human being, an adaptive machine, or a combination of the two. Knowing how students interpret the spaces in which they work, and how their activities are influenced by their surroundings, is vital if one needs to design supportive learning environments. Finally, being able to integrate thinking about design, environment, learning activity and outcomes is key to progress in this field.

1
The Practice of Educational/Instructional Design

Peggy A. Ertmer, Martin L. Parisio, and Dewa Wardak

What is Design?

Design has been defined in a number of ways, with designers from various fields (e.g., architecture, fashion, and education) conceptualizing and defining their work in slightly different ways. Although design can be used to describe both a process and a product (Smith & Boling, 2009), in this chapter, we focus primarily on the process, or ‘work’, of design. Thus, design is defined here as a goal directed, problem-solving activity (Archer, 1965; Rowland, 1993), which results in the creation of something useful that did not exist previously (Reswick, 1965). Furthermore, we include the idea, proposed by Cross (2007), which describes design as occurring within a complex conceptual space, comprising both opportunities and constraints, which must be resolved in order to achieve desired and effective results. This definition, then, encapsulates the complex space within which designers work, while also suggesting that design often involves the resolution of competing tensions or priorities. In educational/instructional design, these tensions arise from competition between such things as learning outcomes, policy guidelines, graduate attributes, and students’ needs and expectations (Bird, Morgan, & O’Reilly, 2007).

For many years, Cross has emphasized the importance of ‘understanding the design process through an understanding of design cognition, or the ‘designerly’ ways of knowing and thinking’ (2007, p. 41). According to Cross (2006, p. 22), ‘design . . . encompasses unique things to know, ways of knowing, and ways of finding out about them’. By considering the work of educational/instructional designers as a ‘kind of design’, we are better positioned to see parallels between the processes, expertise, and languages of instructional design and those of other fields. This is supported by the results of Rowland’s (1993) work, which highlighted many similarities between instructional design-focused studies and those in other design fields. Indeed, this similarity was initially noted by Simon (1969) over 40 years ago when he boldly proclaimed, ‘design is the core of all professional training’ (pp. 55–56). Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that much of what a designer does is common across design domains (Blackwell, Eckert, Bucciarelli, & Earl, 2009; Eckert, Blackwell, Bucciarelli, & Earl, 2010). For example, Eckert and colleagues (2010) found designers of different domains shared common stories about getting the right brief from the client and embraced descriptions of design as a ‘conversation’ with materials and tools. Interestingly, designers from different fields were able to comprehend each other even when unfamiliar terminology was used.

According to Rowland (1993), designing instruction is a subset of designing, in general, and as such, the general characteristics of design hold true for the more narrow instances of educational/instructional design. More specifically he defines instructional design as being ‘directed toward the practical purpose of learning, i.e., the designer seeks to create new instructional materials or systems in which students learn’ (p. 87). This includes, then, the entire process of ‘the analysis of learning and performance problems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and management of instructional and non-instructional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings, particularly educational institutions and the workplace’ (Reiser, 2007, p. 7).

Who Participates in Design Work?

In educational contexts, design work is undertaken by both multi-professional teams and solo designers. While some designers hold design-focused titles such as instructional designer, educational or curriculum designer, others engage in design work primarily as teachers, students, or library media specialists. In general, larger organizations often employ designers as part of their workforce, while smaller organizations tend to hire designers, as consultants, on an as-needed basis. However, regardless of whether designers are internal or external to the organization, their designs are influenced by the various contexts in which they occur.

Different Approaches to Design Work

Depending on work contexts, designers may function as members of a team or individually, and as external or internal to the organization they are serving. In large design teams, the division of labour often maps to individuals’ skills; for example, an instructional design team might include a multimedia designer, graphic artist, pedagogy specialist, and so on. In a study of design-intensive industries, Dell’Era & Verganti (2010) found that innovators in design often collaborated with external designers to draw on knowledge diversity (p. 135).

Another common approach, participatory- or user-design, involves the end-user in significant design decisions (Carr, 1997). In general, end-users comprise those for whom the instruction is intended; in instructional/educational design, then, end-users can include teachers or students, depending on the specific design. Carr-Chellman, Cuyar, & Breman (1998) noted that this approach enabled all stakeholders to have a voice in the decision-making process, creating a greater sense of unity and project momentum. A good example of a participatory design approach is rapid prototyping (Jones & Richey, 2000) in which the end-users are involved throughout the design and development stages, resulting in a higher likelihood of successful implementation. However, increased time is required to educate participants about basic terminology and project-design techniques. Similarly, there is an interesting line of inquiry into the roles of learners as designers (e.g., Cameron & Gotlieb, 2009; Kolodner et al., 2003; Lim, 2008) and co-designers (Könings, Brand-Gruwel, & van Merriënboer, 2010, 2011). Jonassen (1994) took this line of inquiry even further by arguing, ‘We should take the tools away from the instructional designers and give them to the learners, as tools for knowledge construction, rather than media of conveyance and knowledge acquisition’ (online, para. 5).

Teachers as Designers

Recently, Goodyear (2010) emphasized the importance of broadening our conception of educational praxis to incorporate the concept of teaching-as-design. Hoogveld, Paas, Jochems, and van Merriënboer (2001, 2002) present a useful line of research in this area. For example, Hoogveld, Paas, and Jochems (2005) found that teachers who were trained in an instructional systems design methodology, the four-component instructional design model (4C-ID; van Merriënboer, 1997), performed better as designers than those who were not trained. In a more recent study, Bennett and colleagues (2011) interviewed 30 teachers across 16 Australian universities to examine various aspects of teachers’ design activities including their teaching approaches, the contexts in which they worked, their approaches to designing, the key influences on their design activities, and the support mechanisms they accessed. Results indicated teachers frequently engaged in design and redesign of units, in both teams and individually, and were often given extensive flexibility in their design activities. In a similar vein, Lovitt and Clarke (2011) analysed several quality lesson plans to distil a set of generalizable and transferable design features that teachers tended to incorporate into their lessons. Components observed across lessons included a focus on group work and multiple ability levels, establishing challenges for students to grapple with, facilitating problem-solving, and instilling ownership in multiple interconnected content areas.

Instructional Designers as Project Managers

Design work often occurs alongside project management. Although the literature describes various models for instructional design project management (e.g., Gentry, 1994; Greer, 1992; Layng, 1997; Yang, Moore, & Burton, 1995), Van Rooij (2010) indicated a mismatch between the project management skills required of instructional designers in the workplace and the skills and knowledge taught in formal education courses. Indeed, Merrill and Wilson (2007) stated that ID graduates tend to spend the majority of their time on the job managing projects and training others to design instruction. As reported by Cox and Osguthorpe (2003), instructional designers in corporate and educational settings can spend up to 35% of their time in meetings and project management activities. Although the results might not generalize to other settings, this finding emphasizes the fact that project management can be a significant aspect of an instructional designer’s work.

Levels and Contexts of Design

When conceptualizing phenomena, it is useful to consider the macro, micro, and meso contexts in which they occur (Goodyear & Ellis, 2008; Jones, Dirckinck-Homfeld, & Lindstrom, 2006). For example, before students enter a programme of study, curriculum designers work at the macro level to delineate a configuration of courses through which the students must progress. At the meso level, designers and teachers work to create individual learning tasks for students, and at the micro level learners design individual study practices. In theory, at least, design is practised at each of these levels when there is a need to achieve a desired goal, with the expectation being that design outcomes will be communicated across each level.

Undoubtedly, context shapes both the design process and design outcomes; what is often not considered, however, is how the design subsequently reshapes the context. Designers must frequently reflect on the design situation and respond appropriately. In education, such reflection involves gathering qualitative feedback from learners and quantitative feedback from formal co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Part I FOUNDATIONS
• Part II DESIGN METHODS
• Part III IMPLEMENTATION
• Part IV EVALUATION
• Index