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“Laptops and Ipads need to be banned from the class room!” / “Inclusive education has to be endorsed” / “School-based exams are worthless!”
Like many others (students, parents, teachers, policy-makers), you presumably already have a firm stance about these topics and education in general. But did you ever question your own stance? Did you ever consider a (plausible) alternative or perhaps even realized it might be based on a ‘myth’?
There are many conceptualizations of instructional design and evaluation and probably even more stances about their implications for educational practices (e.g., learning goals, instruction, and evaluation/assessment). Is this troublesome? No, it stimulates the development of new teaching and evaluation / assessment approaches, methods, and tools. Let’s embrace this creativity, but especially educational scientists also need to be aware of its (potential) pitfalls. Unfortunately, educational practices have experienced unsuccessful implementations as well. The ID&E course encourages (prospective) educational scientist to be creative and critical with the ‘facts’ into mind.
The ID&E course objectives, their examination, and alignment with the Dublin descriptors (Master level) are described in Table 1.
Table 1. Overview ID&E course objectives, examination, and Dublin Descriptors
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| Dublin Descriptor |
IDE course objective |
Examination |
| 1. Knowledge and understanding |
Acquiring knowledge and insight into: |
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Provides a basis or opportunity for originality in developing or applying ideas.
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- educational psychology, instructional design, and theories and models in the areas of: teaching modules, new teaching materials and media;
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Exam
(knowledge questions) |
- relevant developments in the field of instructional design and assessment;
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- methodology and theory formulation on the subject of instructional design and evaluation;
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- the latest developments and current issues in instructional design and evaluation.
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| 2. Applying knowledge and understanding |
Application of knowledge and insight into: |
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| Problem solving abilities [applied] in new or unfamiliar environments within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts. |
- analysing, evaluating and substantiating the selection and application of instructional design models and evaluation methods in various contexts, and
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Exam
(application questions)
Group assignment |
- critically analysing texts and assertions regarding design and evaluation issues and, partly on the basis of this, creating a design (learning environment, assessment) or issuing advice.
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| 3. Ability to make judgements |
Forming a stance by means of: |
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Demonstrating the ability to integrate knowledge and handle complexity, and
formulate judgements with incomplete data.
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- developing a critical approach to data and forming an independent assessment of the data.
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Group assignment |
| 4. Ability to communicate |
Communicating about: |
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Communicating their conclusions and the underpinning knowledge and rationale (restricted scope) to specialist and non-specialist audiences (monologue).
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- educational research and scientifically supported educational practice with partners within and outside the academy (presentation, discussion, and advice).
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Group assignment |
| 5. Learning skills |
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Study in a manner that may be largely self-directed or autonomous.
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Not an objective in this course |
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Hopefully you are challenged to pick up the glove.
We look forward to working with you on this course!
Bert Slof
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Instructional Design and Evaluation is characterised by the integration of scientific knowledge in three disciplines: (1) theories of learning and expertise development, (2) theories of instruction, and (3) theories of evaluation/assessment. These three fields of science contribute to the basic knowledge of Instructional Design and Evaluation.
Theories of learning and expertise development (descriptive)
Important and well-known learning theories are behaviourism, cognitivism and (socio) constructivism. In addition, a more recently introduced learning theory - Connectivism - will be discussed as well. These theories have different assumptions about how individuals learn (processes and mechanisms) and therefore different perspectives on defining learning goals, developing and providing instruction and assessment(s).
Theories of expertise development focus on how expertise can be conceptualized (e.g., novice - expert) and which processes and mechanisms are involved to become and stay an expert in the field. In the ID&E course the similarities and differences between the theories and their implications for instructional design (i.e., learning goals and instruction) and evaluation (i.e., formative and/or summative evaluation) will be discussed. These insights provide (prospective) educational scientists a basic understanding of how learning process and expertise development might take place. It does, however, not prescribe (e.g., guidelines) how instruction design and evaluation methods and techniques should be developed and implemented. To address this, the ID&E course will also include theories of instructional design and theories of assessment and evaluation.
Theories of instructional design (prescriptive)
Theories on instructional design are not about how individuals learn and gain expertise, but about the way instruction can best be designed. In contrast to merely describing learning processes, theories of instructional design provide substantiated guidelines for developing and implementing instruction. Instruction is broadly defined here and refers, for example, to concrete materials/instructions, ICT-tools, multimedia, games, learning environments, curricula. The guidelines are prescriptive in nature, so, for example, design steps (e.g., 4C-ID model), design principles (e.g., multimedia principles) and criteria for complexity (e.g., learning task hierarchy, taxonomy learning outcomes) are made available for instructional designers. The ID&E course will mainly focus on cognitive principles of instructional design; studying instruction from a cognitive perspective on learning such as the cognitive load and multimedia theory. In addition, theories about learning in interaction will be discussed. This involves studying the role of interaction (e.g. between teacher and pupil, between pupils themselves or between pupil and teaching material) during teaching and instruction. These insights provide (prospective) educational scientists a basic understanding of how specific learning processes and expertise developments can be fostered by the design of a specific instruction / learning environment.
Theories of evaluation / assessment (descriptive and prescriptive)
When designing instruction, it is important to take consider the learning goals for which the instruction was designed and how they will be evaluated. Theories of assessment and evaluation refers to theories on assessing educational performance; type of instruments (test, questionnaire, performance assessment), number of assessments, goal of the assessment (formative, summative) and psychometric (validity, reliability) and edumetric (transparency, utility) quality criteria. It also refers to theories on evaluating (the development) of learning materials and learning environments. The ID&E course especially focuses on discussing holistic perspectives on substantiating the validity of assessments and evaluations, such as the argument-based approach and evidence-centred design. In addition, the concept of constructive alignment will be emphasized throughout the whole ID&E course. One’s conceptualization of learning and expertise development should be in line with one’s ideas about instruction and evaluation/assessment and vice versa. These insights provide (prospective) educational scientists a basic understanding of how one should substantiate the alignment between the learning goal(s), the characteristics of the instruction, and the characteristics of the evaluation/assessment.
Application to educational policy-making and educational practice
Although prescriptive theories already provide concrete guidelines for instructional design and evaluation/assessment, application to educational policy-making and educational practices will be emphasized in other ways as well. After discussing the main theories in lectures 1, 2 and 3, their application will also be discussed in the remaining lectures. That is, lectures 4 - 7 will each address a trending topic in the field of ID&E (i.e., motivation, game-based learning, blended learning and learning analytics) and will discuss this from a constructive alignment perspective. Furthermore, the topic will be discussed with different international perspectives and the national macro- (government), meso- (school)- and micro- (class room) level and the interplay between them into mind.
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