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Instructional Design as a Way of Acting in Relationship with Learners
Abstract
In this chapter, I present a view of instructional design that responds to the tendency some designers have shown to take ultimate responsibility for the learning that people experience. First, I describe different ways that designers have historically assumed they were primarily responsible for students’ learning. Second, I discuss how similar issues are still a concern even with recent evolutions in the field toward human-centered design practices. Third, I present a view of instructional design, based in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, that considers it to be a type of relationship that designers enter into with learners, rather than principally being a process for making instructional products. In presenting this, I also suggest how a reframed view provides new ways of considering designer responsibility, helping designers better understand what they are influencing when they design. This can lead to designers being better partners with learners in pursuit of the unique disclosure of all parties involved, which is a type of achievement that could not be attained without viewing learners as equal contributors to the learning relationship.
... Lee, 2021, p. 497). To do this, they still tend to create some kind of object or operation (product or process) that is meant to have a discernable, concrete effect on the people using them (McDonald, 2021). ...
... Like teaching, LIDT is usually defined by the products and services it creates (McDonald, 2021). Of course, LIDT professionals do create things meant to be a factor in learning situations. ...
... But, also like teaching, if what we design is viewed as our sole contribution, there will be dimensions of the field that we misunderstand. As one example, when LIDT is considered to be only a type of design, there is a tendency to consider learning to be the product we create, and students as the output of our design efforts (Gur & Wiley, 2007;Lee, 2021;McDonald, 2021). This, however, is an overly simplistic view of learning (Yanchar & Francis, 2022). ...
We currently face a problem in the field of learning and instructional design and technology (LIDT). We have an important contribution to offer towards what Beckwith (1988) called “the transformation of learners and . . . learning” (p. 18). However, in pursuit of this mission, we have become too fixated on being designers and applying the methods of design thinking. As valuable as design has been for our field, it’s ultimately too narrow an approach to help us have the impact we desire because it overemphasizes the importance of the products and services we create. To be more influential, we need approaches that focus our efforts on nurturing people’s “intrinsic talents and capacities” that are ultimately outside of our ability to manage and control (Thomson, 2005, p. 158; see also Biesta, 2013). Tying ourselves to design will not accomplish this, so we need to cultivate an identity of our own—an identity centered on what Dunne (1997) called the character and dispositions of “practical judgment” (p. 160).
In this chapter I hope to make these issues clear. I start by describing how design’s focus on creating and making misleads our understanding and application of important dimensions of our field. Doing this limits our impact. I then describe how we can cultivate an LIDT identity that is better suited for the aims we are pursuing. An LIDT-specific identity may include some methods from design thinking, but it will also encompass additional ways of improving the human condition, all centered in the character of practical judgment. I end by calling on readers to consider what this important evolution for our field means for their personal practice.
... In the making view, OBL actors, including instructional designers, faculty members, and even students, find it difficult to conceptualize how education itself is anything other than a product or service that is the output of intentional efforts to define an outcome and then follow a plan to achieve that end. In this sense, education is similar to-if not the same as-any other consumer product available in the modern world (Gur & Wiley 2007;McDonald 2021). Critiquing this trend, McDonald argues: ...
Online and blended learning (OBL) overemphasize the process of creating artifacts, producing strategies, or otherwise utilizing a “making” orientation in education. As an alternative to this making-orientation, we offer a model for relational course design founded in the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber. We examine an OBL course design focused on interfaith leadership and ethics that lends itself to the need for relational pedagogy. The focus on asymmetrical and symmetrical relationships that separate Levinas and Buber’s philosophies enable rich ways of designing relational pedagogies and for resisting the making orientation. By focusing on human relationships, we demonstrate design principles through “philosophies of difference” that can be used in OBL.
... While games offer players complex modes of engagement and problem solving, they concurrently create a context that is more strictly divorced from other domains due to its unique rules and goals. Thus, games are an extreme instantiation of the complexities of intentionally designing learning environments that aim to afford learners more freedom (Dishon 2024;McDonald 2021). ...
This article is a collective response to the 2003 iteration of James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Gee’s book, a foundational text for those working in game studies, literacy studies, and education, identified 36 principles of ‘good learning’ which he argued were built into the design of good games, and which have since been used to unsettle the landscape of formal education. This article brings together 21 short theoretical and empirical contributions which centre postdigital perspectives to re-engage with, and extend, the arguments first raised by Gee regarding the relationship between videogames and learning. Organised into five groups, these contributions suggest that concepts and attitudes associated with the postdigital offer new thinking tools for challenging grand narrative claims about the educative potential of technologies while also providing rich analytical frames for revisiting Gee’s claims in terms of postdigital videogame literacies.
... Scholars have argued that course design practices that are oriented towards efficiency and optimization push online/blended learning into various, reductive tendencies. McDonald (2021) argued that there is "downward pressure" in many instructional design models to "view learners… [as] matter to be mastered and shaped, [with] instructional strategies and techniques [being] the tools designers have to produce [desired] forms of learning" (p. 47). ...
This article reports research into calculative and optionalized forms of online/blended course design in higher education. This was investigated through a critical case study, centered on two faculty members and one instructional designer at a university in the United States, and using an interpretive framework that highlighted the effects of calculation and optionalization in education. The course design practices at the designer’s disposal tended to distort the teaching ideals towards which the faculty members aimed, along with many of the teaching approaches they relied on to achieve their goals. The faculty often felt restricted in their ability to form relationships with their students, while also observing that students tended to resist their attempts to engage in what they referred to as formational activities. Through these and other experiential tensions, the faculty left the project with a pervasive sense of ambiguity about course design and its contribution towards their experience as educators. The article concludes by exploring what implications these findings have for the study and practice of online/blended course design in higher education.
... This approach is characterized by students who have responsibility for their learning, collaboration between participants, illstructured problems as the basis of inquiry, a tutor (or facilitator) who guides students through the learning process, and informational, spatial, and/or technological resources that facilitate participants' free interactions (Cowdroy, 1994). Designers can use the patterns of problem-based learning in such a way as to encourage the kinds of outcomes for which it is known, even though once the situation begins they must realize that participants will always take it over and shape it to their own ends (McDonald, 2021). ...
Practitioners in the field of learning and instructional design are commonly told that “theories are the foundation for designing instructional solutions to achieve desired learning outcomes” (Oyarzun & Conklin, 2021). But if this is true, why do designers often report that theory is “too abstract and inapplicable” to address common problems of practice (Yanchar et al., 2010, p. 50)? Or, alternatively, that theories are so “rigid” (p. 51) and prescriptive that they lead to one-size-fits-all solutions that do not fit the circumstances in which designers are working?
In my studies, I have come to believe that part of the problem is that designers think about theory the wrong way. They often assume it is like a tool (a power drill, for instance, or a circular saw). In this view, theory has some kind of capacity built into it that is independent of the person using it. Anyone can pick it up and produce results (if they have received the proper training, of course). But this perspective misunderstands something fundamental about human-centered work like learning and instructional design. Theories do not solve problems. People do. This does not mean theory is useless. It just means it plays a different role in designers’ work than being a tool that they apply. So, if designers want theory to be applicable and usable they need to first put it into its proper place—a place that recognizes that they—the designers—are most central to the work of improving education, and not a set of abstract, theoretical ideas that are presumed to have the power to solve problems. From this perspective, theory becomes one of many supports for practice, but not the most important nor the most decisive.
My purpose in this chapter is to explain these issues. First, I review some of the challenges with the field’s traditional views of theory. Next, I offer a different view of theory that conceptualizes it as a support that helps designers strengthen their own capacities for better judgement. Finally, I briefly describe different kinds of theory that apply to learning and instructional design practice, and how they support designers’ judgement in differing ways.
... Third, it presents a view of instructional design, based on the philosophy of education in each field, that considers it a relationship that course designers enter into with learners, rather than being a process for making instructional products. Lastly, it suggests how a reframed view provides new ways of considering designer responsibility, helping course designers better understand their influence when designing (McDonald, 2021). This can lead to course designers being better partners with learners in pursuit of the unique disclosure of all parties involved, a type of achievement that could not be attained without viewing learners as equal contributors to the learning relationship. ...
Contemporary literature course has been extensively designed in various contexts and from various perspectives, including histories, policies, curricula, and practices. However, educational technology has been affected in recent years (e.g., e-learning particularly, contemporary literature teaching and learning dimension). The study aimed to investigate Thai and American perspectives on implementing the instructional design in the Contemporary Literature course regarding content and teaching styles, and potential improvements in teaching and learning skills. The participants were two teachers from two institutes in Thailand and the United States of America who had experience in teaching literature for decades. A semi-structured interview was utilized to gather information about the participants’ views. Each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. All interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed for analysis. Data were analyzed using a thematic coding method to find significant statements related to the research questions. The findings regarding content and teaching styles indicated that the American participant thought she put the focus on the technological aspect of educating students about the values of physical activity with connection to the indigenous authors’ lifestyles and lifelong learning to promote the learners’ dreams and enjoyment (i.e. self-awareness with global skills). The Thai participant emphasized encouraging the learners to develop good attitudes to become critical readers (i.e., 21st_ century skills). However, peer teaching, cooperative learning, direct instruction, demonstration, and feedback, personal responsibility were highlighted as implemented standards provided by the participants from both countries. Overarching learning goals of contemporary literature course are to initiate and encapsulate the key messages into the framework with transformative competencies; reviews the nature of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that young learners will need; and ends with possible curriculum design principles.
This article addresses a serious issue that besets learning design: its over-reliance on frameworks that promise particular outcomes for individual learners that accord with pre-defined metrics. This is partly a function of the nature of learning design and development itself which is commonly seen as outcome-oriented activity that should benefit individual learners in specific ways. An alternative approach is adopted here which calls attention to other happenings at the heart of education, including positive emotions we experience that are made known through less measurable and more fleeting points of reference. Hence, we draw on sources such as poems and personal reflections in order not just to design learning but to dream it. The concept of a practicescape is invoked which serves not just to situate learning but to remind the learner that their learning experience only happens within the context of their finite lifetime. Seven prac-ticescapes are presented and reflected on by the authors as a conversation framework for interrogating ideas of learning that owe more to dreams, poems, and possibilities than aims, objectives, or outcomes. Drawing on early Buddhist philosophy, the prac-ticescapes attempt to honour particular affective states and conjure a heart-centred framework on which to hang speculative questions and provocations for learning design that are focused on cultivating and sustaining the most positive forms of human experience. These practicescapes are offered as a speculative learning design climbing frame that could take us from dreams of possibility to enlivened and embodied presents.
The concept of design has become central to different strands of educational discourse: from the design of educational environments, through the depiction of design thinking as an exalted educational aim, to positioning design as a means of overcoming the gap between educational theory and practice. Setting out to clarify the appeal and ambiguity of the concept of design, this paper identifies three key tensions underpinning the different uses of ‘design’ in educational discourse: (i) at the level of the student, between action and thought; (ii) at the level of the educator, between freedom and control; and (iii) at the level of research, between theory and practice. Espousing a postdigital lens, the second part of the paper then explores how digital technologies could both accentuate and attenuate these tensions, reshaping practices and conceptions of design while also being shaped by them. This analysis highlights the importance of attending to the intricate relations between designs, technologies and users, the messiness and non-linear nature of design, and the value-laden framing and reframing of problems and solutions inherent in design processes. Whereas design is a concept intended to highlight contingency, its spread, and at times overuse, could result in its ‘death’— emptying design of its essential multiplicity and instability by positioning it as a fixed solution. Accordingly, it is vital to remain aware and appreciate design’s liminal nature, as a vital component of our capacity to imagine, and design, alternative educational futures.
My purpose in this chapter is to offer a reimagined view of theory in the field of learning design and technology (LDT). Instead of viewing theory as an external storehouse of knowledge, or a rule-like system for professionals to apply, in this framework theory is viewed as an orienting aid that supports practitioners as they refine their personal capacities for perception, discrimination, and judgment. Theory plays this orienting role as it offers insights into LDT-relevant practical knowledge, productive heuristics, points professionals towards opportunities to act, or identifies significant patterns and forms of excellence to which they can pay attention as they attempt to improve their craft. The chapter concludes with some implications for this framework for future research and practice in the field.
This paper examines how authentic project experiences matter to instructional design students. We explored this through a single case study of an instructional design student (referred to as Abby) who participated as a member of an educational simulation design team at a university in the western United States. Our data consisted of interviews with Abby that we analyzed to understand how she depicted her participation in this authentic project. In general, Abby found her project involvement to open up both possibilities and constraints. Early in her involvement, when she encountered limitations she did not expect, those constraints showed up as most significant and she saw the project as a place of disenfranchisement that highlighted her inadequacies. Later, in conjunction with changes in the project structure and help from a supportive mentor, she reoriented to the possibilities her participation made available, all of which disrupted the cycle of disenfranchisement in which she seemed to be caught. Abby saw more clearly opportunities that had previously been obscured, and she became one of the project’s valued leaders. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for understanding how authentic project experiences can fit into instructional design education.
The purposes of this study are 1) to explore the concept of design thinking/human‐centred design as expressed across the literature, using a systematic content analysis methodology, and 2) to arrive at empirically‐based implications and recommendations for the instructional design field drawn from this search and analysis. Since 2000, design thinking has been highly sought after and is increasingly applied to novel challenges. Since then, it has become a force of innovation in business, and a point of contention in design—having created a reductionist perspective of design which has simultaneously become a buzzword for innovation. In the instructional design field, practitioners incorporate the methods used into new design models, and scholars frame new theories within its bounds. Through this process, the meaning and nature of the concept have become complex and clouded. This paper reports results of a systematic content analysis involving examination of 12 databases, analysing 1075 abstracts for fit and identifying 11 core articles. An extended literature review, including more than 70 non‐core articles selected from the study data pool, provides a foundation for analysis of the 11 core articles. Results include analysis of the core articles for themes, industry and common citations; recommendations and implications for the instructional design field are drawn from the literature, as well as recommendations for future research.
Design thinking has attracted considerable interest from practitioners and academics alike, as it offers a novel approach to innovation and problem solving. However, there appear to be substantial differences between promoters and critics about its essential attributes, applicability and outcomes. To shed light on current knowledge and conceptualizations of design thinking we undertook a multi‐phase study. First, a systematic review of the design thinking literature enabled us to identify 10 principal attributes and eight tools and methods. To validate and refine our findings, we then employed a card sorting exercise with professional designers. Finally, we undertook a cluster analysis to reveal structural patterns within the design thinking literature. Our research makes three principal contributions to design and innovation management theory and practice. First, in rigorously deriving 10 attributes and eight essential tools and methods that support them from a broad and multidisciplinary assortment of articles, we bring much needed clarity and validity to a construct plagued by polysemy and thus threatened by “construct collapse.” Second, aided by the identification of perspectives of scholars writing about design thinking, we provide detailed recommendations for relevant topics warranting further study in order to advance theoretical understanding of design thinking and test its applications. Third, we identify the enduring, yet essential, questions that remain unresolved across the extant design thinking literature and that may impede its practical implementation. We also provide suggestions for the theoretic frames, which may help address them, and thus advance the ability of scholars and managers alike to benefit from design thinking's apparent advantages.
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This study employed a hermeneutic investigative approach to determine instructional designers’ underlying views of learner responsibility for their own learning, and how those views informed design practice. Prior research has examined how instructional designers spend their time, make decisions, use theory, and solve problems, but have not explored how views of learner responsibility might inform design work. Based on intensive interviews of practitioners in the field, this study produced themes concerning how instructional designers balance their own and their learners’ responsibility for learning. Overall, these results suggest that designers feel largely responsible for learning to take place, but are seeking ways of sharing that responsibility with their learners. Other conclusions are discussed and future directions for research are offered.
Instructional Design literature provides descriptions of established models that are particularly helpful for novices learning the patterns and approaches that have historically proven successful. However, it does not provide as much information about the design process in its largest sense. The popularity of established ID models may cause instructional designers to limit their approaches and isolate themselves from alternate views of design. The authors present a synthesis of the literature of design in general with specific approaches cited in fields including architecture, the automotive industry, engineering, fashion, the performing arts, as well as instructional design, and conclude with a discussion of what ID might adopt and adapt from other design disciplines to foster professional development and expertise.
We present a qualitative study of the tension between manipulative and cooperative approaches to instructional design. We found that our participants struggled to resist manipulative tendencies in their work contexts. More specifically, our findings suggest that our participants sought to design with their learners in mind to foster a more cooperative approach. In doing so, participants in our study reported asking themselves key questions in their design practice that had to do with (a) inviting learners to engage through relevant and meaningful instruction, (b) imagining what learners are thinking and feeling, and (c) putting themselves in their learners’ shoes to understand possible learner experience with the designed instruction. For designers in similarly constrained work contexts, we recommend self-questioning that leads toward cooperative (and less manipulative) instructional design practices.
The German philosopher Hannah Arendt believes that storytelling can be used to reopen the idea of public space and to facilitate dialogue/action amongst citizens aimed at attaining a more participative society. She regards storytelling as the only real political action, as it opens up the idea of public space where everybody is invited to take part in the discussion in which decisions upon the polis – the common realm – are taken together. Arendt goes back to Aristotle’s definition that man is a political animal, “zoon politikon”. To participate in the construction of the common realm and to be an active component of societal life is what defines the most profound human vocation. Arendt sees this as the meaning of the word “hero”; not a superman, but rather one who contributes to the construction of the public sphere. This paper further expands on the political implications of storytelling in social innovation, by taking into account the writings of Arendt as well as some experimentations of use of storytelling in social innovation taken place at international level.
Is Design Thinking (DT), and a designerly orientation to users, really just a complement to, not a substitute for, R&D? When DT claims to facilitate partnership with, and the participation of, stakeholders of all descriptions, are these claims to be taken at face value? This paper first examines the current craze for DT, and then looks at DT’s historical emergence over the past 50 years, focusing mainly, though not exclusively, on developments in the US and the UK. In line with perspectives published in 2010 as Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Design, the paper is critical of DT, arguing that it acts as a force broadly hostile to technological innovation. As well, the paper looks at the roots of DT today, and, in its conclusion, begins to outline an alternative approach.
This paper reports a case study investigating the productive value of designers' creative practice within complex academic-industrial collaborations in which a designer's practice had a formative role. Adopting a pragmatic approach, collaborators' experiences of this project were reconstructed through interviews and 'annotated timelines.' Collaborators were found to value the designer's work in responding to their particular concerns whilst also opening up new possibilities. This paper discusses how such benefit is attributable to the '. designerly thinking' of skilled designers, shifting the focus of work from problem-solving to problematisation and enabling participants to collectively formulate concerns, roles, and potentialities. The paper concludes that designers' creative practice can enable collaborative projects to build upon and transcend participants' expertise and expectations through 'creative exchange.'.
Objectification refers to the way in which everything (including human beings) is treated as an object, raw material, or resource to be manipulated and used. In this article, objectification refers to the way that education is often reduced to the packaging and delivery of information. A critique of objectification in instructional technology is presented. In the context of Heidegger’s critique of technology, the authors claim that objectification in education is metaphysical in the sense that the intelligibility (being) of education is equated with ready-to-use packages, and thus is reduced to delivery and transmission of objects. The embodiment dimension of teaching and learning can help us in resisting this reduction. The authors argue that objectification increases bureaucratic control over the teaching process and deskills teachers; and by which teachers are proletarianized. The authors conclude that instructional designers should create structures in which a care relation and dialogue between students and teachers can take place.
Résumé: L’objectification réfère à la façon dont tout (incluant les être humains) est traité comme un objet, une matière première ou une ressource qui peut être manipulée et utilisée. Dans cet article, l’objectification réfère à la façon dont l’éducation est souvent réduite à la mise en boîte et à la livraison de l’information. Une critique de l’objectification en technologie éducative est présentée. Dans le contexte de la critique de la technologie par Heidegger, les auteurs prétendent que l’objectification en éducation est métaphysique dans le sens que l’intelligibilité (être) de l’éducation équivaut à la mise en boîte prêt-à –utiliser, et se résume donc à la livraison et à la transmission d’objets. L’incarnation de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage peuvent nous aider à résister à cette réduction. Les auteurs arguent que l’objectification augment le contrôle bureaucratique sur le processus d’enseignement et déqualifie les enseignants; de ce fait, les enseignants deviennent prolétariens. Les auteurs concluent que les technologues de l’éducation devraient créer des structures dans lesquelles une relation aidante et un dialogue entre l’étudiant et l’enseignant peuvent prendre place.
Designers have been moving increasingly closer to the future users of what they design and the next new thing in the changing landscape of design research has become co-designing with your users. But co-designing is actually not new at all, having taken distinctly different paths in the US and in Europe. The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the roles of the designer, the researcher and the person formerly known as the ‘user’. The implications of this shift for the education of designers and researchers are enormous. The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the landscape of design practice as well, creating new domains of collective creativity. It is hoped that this evolution will support a transformation toward more sustainable ways of living in the future.
The term design thinking has gained attention over the past decade in a wide range of contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem-solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. This paper reviews the origins of the term design thinking in research about designers and its adoption by management educators and consultancies within a dynamic, global mediatized economy. Three main accounts are identified: design thinking as a cognitive style, as a general theory of design, and as a resource for organizations. The paper argues there are several issues that undermine the claims made for design thinking. The first is how many of these accounts rely on a dualism between thinking and knowing, and acting in the world. Second, a generalized design thinking ignores the diversity of designers' practices and institutions which are historically situated. The third is how design thinking rests on theories of design that privilege the designer as the main agent in designing. Instead the paper proposes that attending to the situated, embodied routines of designers and others offers a useful way to rethink design thinking.
Today, many design projects are collaborative in nature. This means that designers must navigate multiple concerns held by a range of involved actors. This article investigates the expansion of the designer role from creative expert to stager and facilitator of negotiations during the design process. In doing so, the metaphorical notion of an inviting stage director is used to develop a new framework termed ‘staging negotiation spaces’. This framework is informed by experiences and practices from participatory design and analytical insights from actor-network theory. To illustrate the applicability of the framework, it is used to analyse and understand the staging, facilitation, and reframing of negotiations during a co-design process in a large international electronics company.
In this paper we offer a call for the development and utilization of originary theory in instructional design. Originary theory, which is generated by scholars within the field of its intended application, can be contrasted with imported theory, which is formulated in one field and later moved or “imported” into another for new purposes. In making our argument we first review the use of theories imported into instructional design and address limitations that might arise if these theories are overly relied upon, such as if they are treated as the primary source of insight for supporting the work of practitioners. Next, we define originary theory and argue that it should be emphasized within the field of instructional design because of the central role it can play in facilitating the field’s work of designing and developing excellent learning experiences. We further explore how originary theories can support instructional design practice by considering two examples of recent theoretical work that speak to the values, and challenge the assumptions, of instructional designers, disclosing aspects of the field that can help them better accomplish their work. First, we consider originary theory that conceptualizes instructional design as a design discipline; and second, we review originary theorizing that provides alternatives to common views about learners and learning. We conclude by considering what it might mean for the field to more intentionally develop and apply originary instructional design theory.
How organizations can use practices developed by expert designers to solve today's open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems.
When organizations apply old methods of problem-solving to new kinds of problems, they may accomplish only temporary fixes or some ineffectual tinkering around the edges. Today's problems are a new breed—open, complex, dynamic, and networked—and require a radically different response. In this book, Kees Dorst describes a new, innovation-centered approach to problem-solving in organizations: frame creation. It applies “design thinking,” but it goes beyond the borrowed tricks and techniques that usually characterize that term. Frame creation focuses not on the generation of solutions but on the ability to create new approaches to the problem situation itself.
The strategies Dorst presents are drawn from the unique, sophisticated, multilayered practices of top designers, and from insights that have emerged from fifty years of design research. Dorst describes the nine steps of the frame creation process and illustrates their application to real-world problems with a series of varied case studies. He maps innovative solutions that include rethinking a store layout so retail spaces encourage purchasing rather than stealing, applying the frame of a music festival to understand late-night problems of crime and congestion in a club district, and creative ways to attract young employees to a temporary staffing agency. Dorst provides tools and methods for implementing frame creation, offering not so much a how-to manual as a do-it-yourself handbook—a guide that will help practitioners develop their own approaches to problem-solving and creating innovation.
In this article, we further explore the idea that educational design, and subsequently educational design research, are in essence dialogical processes in which problem statements, strategies and interventions, and their implementations are realized in co-creation between different stakeholders. We elaborate on the idea of reflexive design as stated in the article of Richter and Allert (2017) by exploring three deepening thoughts on the characteristics of such dialogical design processes. First, we further relate reflexive design to the concept of participatory design to see if we can use insights from this approach on when and how co-creation can take place. Second, we explore the merits of narrative research as a way to include multiple voices in the process of reflexive design. And third, from a methodological point of view we explore the idea of crystallization as a way to collect data and validate findings within reflexive design research processes.
Design thinking refers to the implementation of a firm’s design philosophy into design processes and outputs. This article introduces two design thinking approaches—user-centered design and design-driven innovation—that frame product design activities and show how these approaches can be incorporated into marketing curricula. The aim of this article is to show how marketing educators can help students appreciate and understand the processes and consequences of developing new products using different design thinking approaches. First, an experiment is conducted to examine the effect of design thinking approaches (user-centered design, design-driven innovation) on design and marketing outcomes (perceived originality, perceived usefulness, and perceived value). Second, based on the results of the study, the article develops a step-by-step guide on how to execute a design thinking module in a product-oriented marketing course.
Instructional designers are increasingly looking beyond the field’s mainstream approaches to achieve desired outcomes. They seek more creative forms of design to help them invent more imaginative experiences that better reflect their vision and ideals. This essay is addressed to designers who are attracted to these expanded visions of their profession. Innovative approaches to design can be considered dangerous, at least to the status quo. The author first discusses why this is so, and then explains how embracing the danger—accepting the risks that accompany originality and innovation—might also be what allows designers to develop experiences consistent with the high-levels of quality they seek. He concludes with some thoughts on the kind of habits and character designers should cultivate to sustain creative, innovative approaches in their practice.
E-learning systems are considerably changing education and organizational training. With the advancement of online-based learning systems, learner control over the instructional process has emerged as a decisive factor in technology-based forms of learning. However, conceptual work on the role of learner control in e-learning has not advanced sufficiently to predict how autonomous learning impacts e-learning effectiveness. To extend the research on the role of learner control in e-learning and to examine its impact on e-learning effectiveness, this study reviews 54 empirical articles on learner control during the period 1996-2013. The findings are then applied to derive a conceptual framework as a reference model to illustrate how learner control affects e-learning effectiveness. The findings provide new insights into the role and different dimensions of learner control in e-learning with implications for learning processes and learning outcomes.
The term instructional design has only come into use in education in the past decade. It refers to the process of systematically applying instructional theory and empirical findings to the planning of instruction. It is applied educational psychology in the best sense of the term. There is a clear focus on an instructional goal that represents what the learner will be able to do when the instruction is completed, the present skills of the learner, and how instruction will take place.
Design has become increasingly important in a number of technology-related fields. Even the business world is now seen as primarily a designed venue, where better design principles often equate to increased revenue (Baldwin and Clark, Design rules, Vol. 1: The power of modularity, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000; Clark et al., Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 3:729–771, 1987; Martin, The design of business: Why design thinking is the next competitive advantage. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009). Research on the design process has increased proportionally, and within the field of instructional design (ID) this research has tended to focus almost exclusively on the use of design models. This chapter examines the emergence of the standard design model in ID, its proliferation, its wide dissemination, and a narrowing of focus which has occurred over time. Parallel and divergent developments in design research outside the field are considered in terms of what might be learned from them. The recommendation is that instructional designers should seek more robust and searching descriptions of design with an eye to advancing how we think about it and therefore how we pursue design (Gibbons and Yanchar, Educ Technol 50(4):16–26, 2010).
When measuring outcomes in corporate training, the authors recommend that it is essential to introduce a comprehensive plan, especially when resources are limited and the company needs are vast. The authors hone in on five critical components for shaping a measurement plan to determine the success and ROI of training. The plan's components should provide a roadmap to address complex corporate training environments in which large numbers of courses are delivered to thousands of learners. Recommendations offered apply equally in smaller, less complex organizations. Following a brief historical perspective covering the development of evaluation methods, the authors examine each of their five critical components-strategy, measurement models, resources, measures and cultural readiness. They claim that while their approach applies to all learning methods, it is especially useful in technologymediated programs, such as self-paced, web-based, online-facilitated, and simulation courses.
According to John Macmurray, ‘teaching is one of the foremost of personal relations’. This paper describes that relation in some detail from the perspective of care ethics. This involves a discussion of the central elements in establishing and maintaining relations of care and trust which include listening, dialogue, critical thinking, reflective response, and making thoughtful connections among the disciplines and to life itself.
Humans did not discover fire—they designed it. Design is not defined by software programs, blueprints, or font choice. When we create new things—technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, ways of thinking—we engage in design. With this expansive view of design as their premise, in The Design Way, Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman make the case for design as its own culture of inquiry and action. They offer not a recipe for design practice or theorizing but a formulation of design culture’s fundamental core of ideas. These ideas—which form “the design way”—are applicable to an infinite variety of design domains, from such traditional fields as architecture and graphic design to such nontraditional design areas as organizational, educational, interaction, and health care design.
Nelson and Stolterman present design culture in terms of foundations (first principles), fundamentals (core concepts), and metaphysics, and then discuss these issues from both learner’s and practitioner’s perspectives. The text of this second edition is accompanied by new detailed images, “schemas” that visualize, conceptualize, and structure the authors’ understanding of design inquiry. This text itself has been revised and expanded throughout, in part in response to reader feedback.
This paper takes a critical look at the design thinking discourse, one that has different meanings depending on its context. Within the managerial realm, design thinking has been described as the best way to be creative and innovate, while within the design realm, design thinking may be partly ignored and taken for granted, despite a long history of academic development and debate. In the design area, we find five different discourses of ‘designerly thinking’, or ways to describe what designers do in practice, that have distinctly different epistemological roots. These different discourses do not stand in competition with each other but could be developed in parallel. We also observe that the management discourse has three distinct origins, but in general has a more superficial and popular character and is less academically anchored than the designerly one. Also, the management design thinking discourse seldom refers to designerly thinking and thereby hinders cumulative knowledge construction. We suggest further research to link the discourses.
Many educational practices are based upon philosophical ideas about what it means to be human, including particular subjectivities and identities such as the rational person, the autonomous individual, or the democratic citizen. This book asks what might happen to the ways in which we educate if we treat the question as to what it means to be human as a radically open question; a question that can only be answered by engaging in education rather than as a question that needs to be answered theoretically before we can educate. The book provides a different way to understand and approach education, one which focuses on the ways in which human beings come into the world as unique individuals through responsible responses to what and who is other and different. This book raises important questions about pedagogy, community and educational responsibility, and helps educators of children and adults alike to understand what truly democratic education entails. The following chapters are included: (1) Against Learning; (2) Coming into Presence; (3) The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common; (4) How Difficult Should Education Be?; (5) The Architecture of Education; and (6) Education and the Democratic Person. This book also contains an Epilogue: A Pedagogy of Interruption.
: Professional practice leadership (PPL) roles are those roles responsible for expert practice, providing professional leadership, facilitating ongoing professional development, and research. Despite the extensive implementation of this role, most of the available literature focuses on the implementation of the role, with few empirical studies examining the factors that contribute to PPL role effectiveness. This article will share the results of a research study regarding the role of organizational power and personal influence in creating a high-quality professional practice environment for nurses. Survey results from nurses and PPLs from 45 hospitals will be presented. Path analysis was used to test the hypothesized model and relationships between the key variables of interest. Results indicate that there is a direct and positive relationship between PPL organizational power and achievement of PPL role functions, as well as an indirect, partially mediated effect of PPL influence tactics on PPL role function. There is also a direct and positive relationship between PPL role functions and nurses' perceptions of their practice environment. The evidence generated from this study highlights the importance of organizational power and personal influence as significantly contributing to the ability of those in PPL roles to achieve desired outcomes. This information can be used by administrators, researchers, and clinicians regarding the factors that can optimize the organizational and systematic strategies for enhancing the practice environment for nursing and other health care professionals.
Over the course of a century of professional practice, designers have mastered a set of skills that can be productively applied to a wider range of problems than has commonly been supposed. These include complex social problems, issues of organizational management, and strategic innovation. Conversely, non-designers—those in leadership positions in companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, professionals in a broad range of services and industries—can benefit from learning how to think like designers. We offer some large-scale and more finely grained ideas about how this might happen.
*This paper is the result of a decade of research on design-driven innovation, which benefited from collaborations and interactions with several scholars. For their insightful inspirations and comments, I gratefully thank Tommaso Buganza, Claudio Dell'Era, and Alessio Marchesi (at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano); Ezio Manzini, Francesco Zurlo, Giuliano Simonelli, and Francois Jegou (at the School of Design of Politecnico); Jim Utterback, Bengt-Arne Vedin, Eduardo Alvarez, Sten Ekman, Susan Sanderson, and Bruce Tether (of the DFPI project); Alan MacCormack, Rob Austin, Douglas Holt, Gianfranco Zaccai, the participants to the Lisbon conference “Bridging Operations and Marketing: New Product Development,” and all manufacturers interviewed in these years, especially Alberto Alessi, Gloria Barcellini, Carlotta De Bevilacqua, and Ernesto Gismondi. Financial support from the FIRB fund “ART DECO—Adaptive InfRasTructures for DECentralized Organizations” is also gratefully acknowledged.
This article reports a theoretical examination of several parallels between contemporary instructional technology (as manifest
in one of its most current manifestations, online learning) and one of its direct predecessors, programmed instruction. We
place particular focus on the unterlying assumptions of the two movements. Our analysis suggests that four assumptions that
contributed to the historical demise of programmed instruction—(a) ontological determinisms, (b) materialism (c) social efficiency,
and (d) technological determinism—also underlie contemporary instructional technology theory and practice and threaten its
long-term viability as an educational resource. Based on this examination, we offer several recommendations for practicing
instructional technologists and make a call for innovative assumptions and make a call for innovative assumptions and theories
not widely visible in the field of instructional technology.
In this paper we describe the criteria of Technology I, II, and III, which some instructional theorists have proposed to describe the differences between a formulaic and a reflective approach
to solving educational problems. In a recent study, we applied these criteria to find evidence of a technological gravity that pulls practitioners away from reflective practices into a more reductive approach. We compared published reports of
an innovative instructional theory, problem-based learning, to the goals of the theory as it was originally defined. We found
three reasons for technological gravity, as well as three approaches some practitioners have used to avoid this gravity. We
recommend that instructional technologists adopt our three approaches, as well as the criteria of Technology III, so they
may better develop instruction of a quality consistent with the innovative instructional principles they claim, and that best
characterizes the goals they have for their practice.
Some thoughts about the problematic term “design thinking
- E Stolterman
Stolterman, E. (2016). Some thoughts about the problematic term "design thinking." Retrieved from
http://transground.blogspot.com/2016/12/composing-some-blogposts-in-small-ebook.html
Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective
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- PA Ertmer
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly,
26(2), 43-71. https://doi.org/10.1002/piq.21143
Learner agency and responsibility in educational technology. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation)
- M T Matthews
Matthews, M. T. (2016). Learner agency and responsibility in educational technology.
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Brigham Young University.
Agency and learning: Some implications for educational technology theory and research
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Yanchar, S. C., & Spackman, J. S. (2012). Agency and learning: Some implications for educational
technology theory and research. Educational Technology, 52(5), 3-13.
Up the programmer: How to stop PI from boring learners and strangling results
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Post, D. (1972). Up the programmer: How to stop PI from boring learners and strangling results.
Educational Technology, 12(8), 14-17.
- R Buchanan
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- I Visscher-Voerman
Buchanan, R., Cross, N., Durling, D., Nelson, H. G., Owen, C., Valtonen, A., Boling, E., Gibbons,
A. S., & Visscher-Voerman, I. (2013). Design. Educational Technology, 53(5), 25-42.
A critique of design thinking : An interrogation into the value and values of design thinking
- N Lourens
Lourens, N. (2015). A critique of design thinking : An interrogation into the value and values of
design thinking. University of Pretoria.
Immersive theaters: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance
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Machon, J. (2013). Immersive theaters: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance.
Palgrave Macmillan.