This situation makes me then wonder how we are able to measure which aspects of the design principles impacted the outcomes of an intervention, and to what extent. Perhaps due to my inexperience as a researcher, I would find it difficult to feel confident about making continuous decisions regarding the design of a program. It seems to me that effective EDR requires an experienced researcher who can quickly make design decisions based upon assumptions from the literature and from experience. My concern is really the potential domino effect of making weak design decisions early on which can then have negative effects on the subsequent decision-making. Very quickly, a design can become either quite convoluted or just based on weak assumptions and decisions. Either way, a researcher would end up in a situation where it would be very difficult to have confidence in the ability to judge the impact of the design elements on the outcomes of the intervention.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Decision-Making in Educational Design Research
The decision-making process inherent in Educational Design Research (EDR) is still a bit muddy for me. My sense of EDR is that the design is constantly in flux. Assumptions, decisions, and changes all continue to happen throughout the design and implementation process. According to McKenney and Reeves (2012), the interactions and resulting changes to the design continue, and can even increase, as a project matures. The video of Dr. Bannan-Ritland describing the process of decision-making in EDR contributed to my confusion. In the video, she defined EDR as an unstructured, problem-solving process. She went on to describe the EDR process as having large numbers of assumptions and decisions made during the design process. She even indicated that her graduate assistants made many decisions along the way concerning the design of a project.
This situation makes me then wonder how we are able to measure which aspects of the design principles impacted the outcomes of an intervention, and to what extent. Perhaps due to my inexperience as a researcher, I would find it difficult to feel confident about making continuous decisions regarding the design of a program. It seems to me that effective EDR requires an experienced researcher who can quickly make design decisions based upon assumptions from the literature and from experience. My concern is really the potential domino effect of making weak design decisions early on which can then have negative effects on the subsequent decision-making. Very quickly, a design can become either quite convoluted or just based on weak assumptions and decisions. Either way, a researcher would end up in a situation where it would be very difficult to have confidence in the ability to judge the impact of the design elements on the outcomes of the intervention.
This situation makes me then wonder how we are able to measure which aspects of the design principles impacted the outcomes of an intervention, and to what extent. Perhaps due to my inexperience as a researcher, I would find it difficult to feel confident about making continuous decisions regarding the design of a program. It seems to me that effective EDR requires an experienced researcher who can quickly make design decisions based upon assumptions from the literature and from experience. My concern is really the potential domino effect of making weak design decisions early on which can then have negative effects on the subsequent decision-making. Very quickly, a design can become either quite convoluted or just based on weak assumptions and decisions. Either way, a researcher would end up in a situation where it would be very difficult to have confidence in the ability to judge the impact of the design elements on the outcomes of the intervention.
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