The more I hear and read about design-based research (DBR), the more it resonates. After reading Sasha Barab's chapter the first time, I asked a collegue if this is what we should be applying in order to make much needed changes to a particular set of fully online courses. The colleague, although immersed in educational technology studies herself, had also never before heard of DBR. What I see at this point is that DBR would offer us a chance to make systematic changes (rather than "bandaid" fixes) of which these online courses are in serious need.
The courses were originally created, over a decade ago, as a part of the MTCU Credentails Framework. The courses fall under the category of General Education, and most every program in an Ontario college must include at least one of these courses. To date, my college is the only one that chose to make the courses fully online.
The (now 35) courses were created by a variety of professors, from a various schools at the college. One professor was tasked with designing and developing the course outline, schedule, learning units, assessment/evaluation, and the Blackboard course site. While this approach to course development offered each professor complete freedom to be as innovative and creative as they wished, the course design approach was unique to them.
Over the past two or three years, these courses have been getting more attention in order to update them, but this has been done on a sort of "fly in, fix, fly out" approach. What DBR would offer to these courses is an approach to change over a longer period of time, and one that could include all stakeholders: students, faculty, and administration.
Working with developing and designing these General Education courses often feels quite chaotic. The courses are dynamic and unique, and fully online. Add to this that working with technology often feels like trying to shoot a moving target. I strongly suspect that a DBR approach to sytematically change these course would be one of the most effective approaches to making significant, viable, and relevant change.
I am glad you find design based research a possible match with your research and practice goals. Design based research is intentionally interventionist, it is focused on innovation that disrupts conventional practices, and is an active collaboration between the research team and practitioners – so, DBR is definitely going to change the experience of all participants, including the researcher, and require a team to identify the changes they want to see, the problems they want to address, and the designs they plan to put in place and study. Unlike case study or ethnography, the purpose of which is to study “what is” without changing it, but to better understand it, the purpose of DBR is to design and implement an innovation and evaluate the results. So, YES, I can see DBR as an approach to studying innovation in online education.
ReplyDeleteDBR also resonates with me. I would encourage you to explore this as a possible avenue for course revision on a more systematic level.
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