Table Of ContentDESIGN 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
