Design Approaches and Tools in Education and Training PDF
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DESIGN APPROACHES AND TOOLS IN EDUCATION AND TRAINING Design Approaches and Tools in Education and Training Edited by J an van den Akker University of Twente, The Netherlands Robert Maribe Branch The University of Georgia, U.S.A. Kent Gustafson The University of Georgia, U.S.A. Nienke Nieveen University of Twente, The Netherlands and Tjeerd Plomp University of Twente, The Netherlands In collaboration with Interuniversitair Centrum voor Onderwijskundig Onderzoek (lCO) SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-94-010-5845-2 ISBN 978-94-011-4255-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4255-7 Printed on acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1999 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic Of mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ix PART I: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES 1. Principles and Methods of Development Research 1 Jan van den Akker 2. Educational Design and Development: An Overview of Paradigms 15 Irene Visscher-Voerman, Kent Gustafson and Tjeerd Plomp 3. Systems Thinking in Instructional Design 29 Gordon Rowland and Ann-Mane Adams 4. Educational Design and Development: A Study of Dutch Design 45 Practices Irene Visscher-Voerman 5. A Relational Approach to Curriculum Design 59 Joseph Kessels 6. Walker's Deliberative Approach in a Small-scale Project: 71 The SPIN-case Ellen van den Berg 7. Design and Development of Third Generation Distance 81 Learning Materials: From an Industrial Second Generation Approach Towards Realizing Third Generation Distance Education Paul Kirschner, Martin Valcke and Dominique Sluijsmans 8. The Design and Prototyping of Digital Learning Material: Some 95 New Perspectives JefMoonen 9. Supporting Instructional Design with an Information System 113 Renate Limbach, Ton de Jong, Jules Pieters and Gordon Rowland v 10. Prototyping to Reach Product Quality 125 Nienke Nieveen 11. The Potential of Formative Evaluation in Program Design Models 137 Ralf Maslowski and Adrie Visscher 12. Instructional Design: A Conceptual Parallel Processor for 145 Navigating Learning Space Robert Maribe Branch PART II: COMPUTER-BASED TOOLS FOR EDUCATIONAL DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT 13. Characteristics of Computer-based Tools for Education and 155 Training Development: An Introduction Nienke Nieveen and Kent Gustafson 14. The Guided Approach to Instructional Design Advising 175 (GAIDA): A Case-based Approach to Developing Instructional Design Expertise Dennis Gettman, Theresa McNelly and Daniel Muraida 15. An EPSS for Instructional Design: NCR's Quality Information 183 Products Process Thomas Jury and Thomas Reeves 16. The PLAT O® Courseware Development Environment 195 Frank Preese and Wellesley Foshay 17. Visual Support for Authoring 205 Rob Wright, Barry Harper and John Hedberg 18. Cognitive Tools to Support the Instructional Design of 215 Simulation-based Discovery Learning Environments: The SIMQUEST Authoring System Ton de Jong, Renate Limbach, Mark Gellevij, Michiel Kuyper, Jules Pieters and Wouter van Joolingen vi 19. CASCADE -SEA. Computer Assisted Curriculum Analysis, 225 Design and Evaluation for Science Education in Africa Susan McKenney 20. The TeleTOP Decision Support Tool (DST) 235 Betty Collis and Wim de Boer 21. Enabling Technologies to Design, Produce and Exploit Flexible, 249 Electronic Learning Materials Martin Valcke, Paul Kirschner and Evelijn Bos 22. The IDXelerator™: Learning-Centered Instructional Design 265 David Merrill and Bennet Thompson 23. Intelligent Support for Instructional Development: Approaches 279 and Limits Michael Spector Information about Authors 291 Preface The broad field of education and training is in rapid evolution. In our 'knowledge intensive and learning society', the expectations about the contribution of education and training are still rising. Moreover, the potential of infonnation and communication (len technology creates many challenges. These trends do not only affect the aims, content and processes of learning, they also appear to have a strong impact on design and development approaches in research and professional practices. The major purpose of this book is to present and discuss current thinking and promising examples of design and development approaches and tools in education and training. The editors of this book hope that it will serve as a resource and reference work that stimulates the advancement of our field. It is intended to be useful in academic settings as well as for professionals in design and development practices. The book has two parts. The first part offers an overview and analysis of design and development approaches, both in (research) literature as well as in professional practices. Moreover, it includes a series of more specific design approaches in various domains. The second part provides an overview and analysis of computer-based design and development tools, including a large selection of specific examples. The two parts have some initial chapters that can be seen as foundational to the remaining contributions. Part One has two of such introductory chapters. Chapter 1 deals with principles and methods of development research. It analyzes how research activities can be connected to design and development activities in order to strengthen the knowledge base of educational design and development. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive overview and discussion of a number of different perspectives on educational design and development. It offers a conceptual framework that helps to clarify and articulate the perpectives in many chapters later on in the book. The nature of these chapters is rather varied in tenns of conceptual orientation, inclusion of practical examples or providing empirical research evidence. The introductory text of Part Two, chapter 13, provides structure to the subsequent chapters in the second half of the book, as it classifies and analyzes all presented (computer-based) tools for a wide variety of design and development contexts. The readers can find further help for orientation in the abstracts and key words at the beginning of each chapter. As a simple aid to facilitate communication between authors and readers, a list of authors' names, affiliations and e-mail address is added (at the end of the book). ix The organizational context of this book stems from the Dutch Interuniversity Centre for Educational Research (Dutch acronym: ICO), in which nine Dutch universities participate. The research activities within that Centre are clustered in four divisions. This book relates to research within the division on 'design-oriented research'. During the last five years faculty members and PhD students from various universities have been engaged in research projects and workshops within this broad area. This volume marks the transition to a next stage of ICO, in which the original four broad divisions have been replaced by a more focused research planning around ten specific research themes. Most of the researchers that participated in the design-oriented division (and that have written chapters for this volume) will continue their collaboration in one of those themes: "ICT Tools for Designing". The overall research question within that theme is: How can the role of ICT tools for various design activities in education be optimized? These tools may support different groups of designers: (a) professional designers of products in a wide range of domains (such as curriculum, instruction, media, assessment); (b) teachers who design their own instruction and who are involved in professional development; and (c) students, especially in learning processes that emphasize constructivist principles. The research approach within this theme will often be characterized as (prototypical) development research. The current book, with its broad first part and more specific second part, already illustrates this trend towards a more specific focus on ICT tools. We hope that the highlights of the first ICO-years will offer inspiration for the forthcoming years. Moreover, we definitely intend to keep the interaction and cooperation with research colleagues from abroad (clearly illustrated by many contributions to this book) as active and productive as before. Obviously, editing and producing a book like this, with its many authors from different institutions, is no small task. The editors want to express their gratitude to all authors for their professional cooperation. Also, we feel indebted to the two reviewers who have provided us with valuable feedback on both the original book proposal as well as the draft manuscript. A special word of thanks is for Petra Zuithof for her very competent secretarial assistance in the preparation of the book. Jan van den Akker Robel1 Branch Kent Gustafson Nienke Nieveen Tjeerd Plomp x Chapter 1 Principles and Methods of Development Research Jan van den Akker University of Twente Keywords: Development research, Formative research, Research methods Abstract This chapter discusses the role of research in relation to educational design and development activities. The first part of the chapter focuses on the rationale and basic principles of development research by outlining motives for conducting formative research, analyzing definitions and aims of various types of development research, and discussing several of its key characteristics. The second part of the chapter deals with methods of development research, exploring some of its typical problems and dilemmas, and discussing several challenges for further action and reflection. 1. INTRODUCTION This book offers a broad overview and many examples of design and development approaches and tools for education and training purposes. These texts share a common characteristic: they interpret education primarily as a 'design science', emphasizing its problem-oriented and interdisciplinary orientation. That perspective is also illustrated through the research approaches and methods chosen in many of those studies. Although 'Design & Development Research' would perhaps serve as a more adequate term to represent all intended research types, we have chosen the term 'Development Research' as an umbrella term, because it is shorter and also because the words 'design' and 'development' are often used interchangeably (see part I of this book). Although research in relation to design and development issues is strongly emerging in various sub-domains of education, few efforts have yet been made to articulate its major principles and methods (the best exception being the well documented analysis by Richey and Nelson, 1996). It is the goal of this chapter to contribute to that discussion. The first part of the chapter (sections 2, 3, and 4) will focus on the rationale and basic principles of development research by: outlining motives for conducting development research, analyzing definitions and aims of various types of development research, and discussing several of its key characteristics. The second part of the chapter (sections 5 and 6) will focus on methods of development research, exploring its 2 van den Akker typical problems and dilemmas, and discussing several challenges for further action and reflection. 2. MOTIVES FOR DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH Various motives for initiating and conducting development research can be mentioned. A basic motive stems from the experience that 'traditional' research approaches (e.g. experiments, surveys, correlational analyses), with their focus on descriptive knowledge, hardly provide prescriptions with useful solutions for a variety of design and development problems in education. Probably the greatest challenge for professional designers is how to cope with the manifold uncertainties in their complex tasks in very dynamic contexts. If they do seek support from research to reduce those uncertainties, several frustrations often arise: answers are too narrow to be meaningful, too superficial to be instrumental, too artificial to be relevant, and, on top of that, they usually come too late to be of any use. Designers do appreciate more adequate information to create a solid ground for their choices and more timely feedback to improve their products. Moreover, the profesional community of developers as a whole would be helped by a growing body of knowledge of theoretically underpinned and empirically tested design principles and methods. Another reason for development research stems from the highly ambitious and complex nature of many reform policies in education worldwide. These reform endeavors usually affect many system components, are often multi-layered, including both large-scale policies and small-scale realization, and are very comprehensive in terms of factors included and people involved. Those radical 'revolutions', if promising at all, cannot be realized on the drawing table. The scope of diverse needs is often very wide, the problems to be addressed are usually ill-specified, the effectiveness of proposed interventions is mostly unknown beforehand, and the eventual success is highly dependent on implementation processes in a broad variety of contexts. Therefore, such reform efforts would profit from more evolutionary (interactive, cyclic, spiral) approaches, with integrated research activities to feed the process (both forward and backward). Such an approach would provide more opportunities for successive approximation of the ideals and for more strategic learning in general. Especially those endeavors that aim at exploring and exploiting the potential of information and communication technologies in education (see the many examples in this book), are very much in need of research to overcome their inherent complexities. Policy makers rarely commission such research, at least compared to investments for development itself. Such negligence may not only be caused by naivete (underestimating the need for clarification of the task and for empirical feedback) or frugality, but also by the still hazy image of development research. Its characteristics and added value demand better theoretical articulation, more empirical evidence, wider application in development practices, and a more prominent place in professional and scientific publications. A motive also worth mentioning here, refers to the rather dubious reputation of educational research in general. Not only does one hear complaints about the lack of relevance of educational research from policy makers and practitioners, also many researchers themselves share that opinion (although usually with somewhat other nuances in their wording of the problem). They strive after more direct contributions to educational improvement processes with a noticeable impact. Moreover, more direct
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