Challenges for design of computer–based learning environments

Abstract

After several decades of learning research and the reactions of cognitive psychology to this research, educational psychologists and training designers developed prescriptive model for the systematic design of instruction (Derry and Lesgold, 1994). This model, called Instructional Design (ID) or Instructional System Design (ISD), consists of knowledge, terminology and procedures that are widely accepted by professionals within the instructional design culture (eg, Dick and Carey, 1990; Gagne and Merrill, 1990). Designing instances of instruction or planning and preparing to instruct can be considered a subset of designing. Instructional design is directed toward the practical purpose of learning; the instructional design process aims at creating new instructional materials or systems with which students learn (Rowland, 1993). The process of instructional design attempts to develop an understanding of the conditions and desired outcomes of instruction, and to use all of this in specifying methods of instruction (Reigeluth, 1983). With the rising interest in more open, often computer–based learning environments, traditional definitions of instructional design need adaptation and more sophisticated models of design have been called for (Hannafin and Land, 1996; Lowyck and Pöysä, 2001; Reigeluth, 1996 and 1998). This paper presents a review of the basic foundations and more recent challenges of the main instructional design traditions.