Introduction to the Special Issue
Copyright 2001 Educational Technology Publications
Mountford (1990) bemoaned the fact that there are few success stories from which interface designers and developers may learn. In the absence of success stories, she suggested that designers share the results of their efforts with one another. There is no formula for "good" design. Design is a creative process based on carefully reasoned decisions. Too seldom, however, do designers discuss the reasons behind their decisions. Similarly, since designers tend to work in isolation from other designers, seldom do we get a chance to see how different designers would approach the same design task.
This, therefore, was my motivation in putting together this special issue. I worked with my assistant editor, Mary Jean (MJ) Bishop, to identify an appropriate science content area and asked her to locate and work with talented science teachers in that area to produce a common set of content materials that could be provided to a group of instructional designers. She selected the physics of energy as the subject area and she and I agreed to make 8th to 11th graders the intended audience for the lesson. Next MJ identified two winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Science (for physics) to serve as our content experts. The first article in this issue details the process by which she selected these experts and provides a copy of the common content outline that our designers were asked to use.
Once we had the content outline, I asked four different designers (including myself) to work from that outline to create a design for a lesson to teach a subset of the content. As it turns out, Lloyd Rieber decided to work with one of his highly talented doctoral students, Michael Matko, as second author. So, we actually ended up with five different designers.
Each designer was told that the subject area for the lesson was physics for 8th to 11th graders, with a specific focus on the physics of energy. To help give a better idea of this lesson's context, designers were given a narrative version and a content outline. The outline was divided into 3 parts: what students learned just before; what this lesson helps them learn; and what they would learn right after this lesson. Designers were instructed to work from the supplied content outline. They were told that the instructional software lesson based on each design should take students between 10 and 30 minutes to complete. We emphasized that we were looking only for a design and they were not expected to do any coding here. Lastly, we specified that manuscripts should cover the following: Assumptions, Design Philosophy, Instructional Model, Special Equipment, Program Operation, Specifics of the Design, and Lessons Learned/Conclusions Drawn/Summary .
The demands I placed on the designers for this issue limited what they were able to do. Similarly, present limitations of technology at the time when they were doing their designs —such as bandwidth limitations on the World Wide Web— influenced what they chose to do. Unfortunately, this is always the case in our field; real-world designers must constantly make compromises in order to meet specifications, time lines, and budgets. So, the conditions under which they worked for this issue might be classified as "authentic." It is also important to note that, by providing the specific content to be covered, I may have indirectly eliminated some approaches to helping the targeted students learn this material. That is, the assumption that there is a body of specific knowledge to be transmitted in the area may favor behaviorist/objectivist and more moderate constructivist positions (see Lowyck & Elen, 1993).
Designers were not able to look at one another's designs until they had completed their initial designs and submitted initial drafts of their manuscripts. As editor, I examined initial drafts, but , even then, I did not look at any other design until I had completed my own. Instead, MJ handled initial edits. The first time all designers saw all designs was at a paper session at the annual meeting of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology held this past February in Long Beach, California.
The organization of this issue is as follows: First MJ Bishop and our two physics content experts describe the derivation of the content outline all designers received. Then Lloyd Rieber and Michael Matzko approach this design task from the viewpoint of play. Next, David Merrill takes a look at momentum in physics through railroading (one of his long-term interests). Wallace Hannum then takes us on a roller coaster ride through physics, helping us learn through the construction of a roller coaster. In the last of the four designs, I ask students to investigate physics by attempting to increase the productivity of a Splam-canning plant. Finally, the issue closes with a discussion among the authors of their thoughts on seeing how others approached the design task.
The four designs in this issue exhibit some convergence. All four designs involve some type of simulation. All exhibit what some would call variations on constructivist design. Three designs (Rieber & Matko, Hannum, and Cates) involve manipulating interchangeable parts to experiment with the concepts. Two (Hannum and Cates) include a direct instruction option. Even when the designers have employed design approaches that appear similar on the surface, however, an examination of their stated instructional philosophies reveals that they did so with divergent expectations and sometimes on the basis of very different assumptions about learning. Stated differently, if you laid these designers out end -to-end, they would still point in all directions. This is part of what makes this special issue so unusual; it gives us a glimpse inside the heads of designers.
It is also intriguing to see what designers do when you give them more time to design. One must conclude from looking at each of these designs that the designers have provided substantially more than the 10-30 minutes of the original specification. Even I, who worked closely with MJ on generating the standards, violated the time restraints. Among other things, this suggests that the time limit was artificial at best and that a realistic learning task takes longer than an artificially specified one. That is, it takes as long to complete an instructionally sound task as it takes, not as long as someone who has not designed it says it takes. Most experienced designers have had the experience of being asked to design a specified number of hours of instruction on a given topic only to find that it “should” actually take less time or more. Perhaps this is confirmation of the wisdom of the attributed response of Abe Lincoln when asked how long a man’s legs should be --“Long enough to touch the ground.”
When MJ and I first spoke tried to explain to one of our content experts what we wanted our designers to do, we had a great deal of difficulty conveying how a computer program might help students learn this content. Our expert envisioned the principal use of the computer as a sophisticated scientific calculator or to run a program in which one enters elements in equations to see their effect. The mathematical predisposition of physics and its teachers may engender such expectations. We're hopeful that this special issue will help to demonstrate to physics teachers (and perhaps teachers in other fields) new ways in which technology may be used to support and enhance teaching.
On a related note, we are also hopeful that this issue will help software developers and publishers see new ways to conceptualized their products. The designs in this issue are strong. A strong design is half the battle; money and time are the rest. If some funder is interested in one or more of the designs in this issue, I am sure that our designers would be happy to accommodate.
I would like to thank all those involved. My authors were good about getting their manuscripts in and making revisions. They worked hard to produce strong designs and to explain them clearly. MJ worked well with our content experts and they, in turn, went through the manuscripts with care, helping us to avoid the more egregious errors. MJ went over each manuscript thoroughly, making my job as editor much more pleasant. Lastly, I want to thank Larry Lipsitz, editor of Educational Technology. He had the foresight to agree to my original proposal for this special issue and the patience to wait almost two years for it to be ready. In a field increasingly populated with atomized research studies in which reports of tiny manipulations dominate the literature, Larry continues to have the vision to recognize that designers need to see designs and that one of the best ways to learn about the implementation of design philosophy is through special issues like this one.
References
Lowyck, J., & Elen, J. (1993). Transitions in the theoretical foundation of instructional design. In T. Duffy, J. Lowyck, & D. Jonassen (Eds.), Designing environments for constructivist learning (pp. 213-229). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Mountford, S.J. (1990). Tools and techniques for creative design. In B. Laurel (Ed.), The art of human-computer interface design (pp.17-30). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.