Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Educational Technology Research and Development

Publication Date

8-1-2013

Abstract

Prescriptive stage models have been found insufficient to describe the dynamic aspects of designing, especially in interdisciplinary e-learning design teams. There is a growing need for a systematic empirical analysis of team design processes that offer deeper and more detailed insights into instructional design (ID) than general models can offer. In this paper we present findings from two case studies of team design meetings involved in the development of fully online courses at two well-established European Distance Universities. We applied an activity-based approach to an extended verbal protocol dataset. This method proved to be adequate to describe the emerging team design process by taking into account both cognitive and social aspects of team activity in this specific context. Our findings provide evidence that design is more than problem solving, mainly because the design process is strongly related to the communication process in a team. Some useful patterns of designing emerge, which shed light on the still implicit nature of ID performed by teams. We conclude by presenting guidelines for team designing in the complex field of e-learning. © 2013 Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

ISSN

1042-1629

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Volume

61

Issue

4

First Page

581

Last Page

605

Disciplines

Education

Keywords

Case study, e-Learning, Instructional design, Patterns, Team communication

Scopus ID

84879780564

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Green: A manuscript of this publication is openly available in a repository

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