Reappraising design practice

Reappraising design practice

Since the emergence of computer-based applications to support teaching and learning in the early 1970s, the practices of those responsible for the design and development of those applications have received considerable attention. The underpinning tradition for those designers and developers has been the practice of Instructional Design, a series of guiding principles to define and create artefacts and/or strategies to facilitate learning. However, as computer technology has evolved over the past 40 years, the successful application of that technology to education and training has not been consistently achieved. It is therefore timely tor visit and reappraises design practices to assess the alignment of these ‘traditional’ approaches with contemporary technology and pedagogy. This chapter argues that to design and develop learning and teaching environments that support an emergent, learner-centred pedagogy, especially in terms of the role and value of simulations, requires an alternative design mind-set. To this end, the chapter elaborates an enhanced version of Proactive Design for Learning (PD4L) and its application to e-simulations as a set of principles that enable technology and pedagogy to align, through the synergy of both the attributes of networked, online technology and contemporary approaches to learning. By applying PD4L in association with an outcomes-based ethos, more effective learning though e-simulations will emerge.

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