Design- Based Research:
A New Research Paradigm
for Open and Distance Learning
Feb, 2007
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.
Canada Research Chair
in Distance Education
Presentation Overview




Traditional opening joke
Need for distance education research
Sorry state of current research
Methodological Orientations


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
Quantitative
Qualitative
Critical
Design-based
Dissemination and building a research culture
Why is Distance Education
Better Than Sex?
•
•
•
•
•
•
If you get tired, you can stop, save your place and
pick up where you left off.
You can finish early without feeling guilty.
You can get rid of any viruses you catch with a $50
program from McAfee
With a little coffee you can do it all night.
You don’t usually get divorced if your spouse
interrupts you in the middle of it.
And If you're not sure what you are doing, you can
always ask your tutor.
Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
Fastest growing university
Canada
34,000 students
700 courses
*
Athabasca University
Athabasca University
Graduate and
Undergraduate programs
Largest Master of Distance
Education program
Only USA Accredited
University in Canada
in
Founded
Population Area
(sq.kms)
Degrees
Pacing
Athabasca 1972
University
Alberta
661,000
3.2 m
Canada
9.980,000
32.8 m
UGrad
Continuous entry
Open
1971
University
Israel
Israel
22,144
6.2 m
Full Arts
and
Science
MBA
MDE
Full Arts
& Sc.
MBA,
MA, MSc
Paced
45000
40000
35000
30000
25000
Athabasca
OUI
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
1987
1997
2002
2006
Distance Education Research


Can you think of at least one major contribution
to practice made by distance education research
in the last decade?
Why does this particular research result make a
difference?
Question ;
 context;
 methodology;
 clarity of presentation?

Typical DE Research



“Here is what we are doing at my university. Isn’t
it wonderful !!”
“Here is what we are doing , why don’t you
come and research it?”
Variable quality by journal, by conference, by
region, by practice.
Defining Research


“the systematic study of materials and sources in order
to establish facts and reach new conclusions” (Oxford
Compact Dictionary, 1991).
adjectives describing research as






disciplined,
transparent,
public,
scientific,
diligent,
and accessible
organized,
problem orientated,
creative,
systematic,
labourous
Why Do Research in Distance
Education?

Many unresolved questions of traditional distance
education


- attrition; F2F tutorial value, paced vs unpaced;
new forms of distance education provision.



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what combinations of group based learning are worth the
cost and inconvenience?
Do face to face tutorials really make a difference or is real
time video or audio conferencing just as effective?
How much does expensive multimedia really enhance student
learning?
how important are real time interactions compared to
asynchronous ones ?
Do Web 2.0 and social software tools really encourage new
Why Educational Research
‘Just Don’t Get No Respect’


Most research is not valued by funders, other
academics or worse by practitioners
Not funded financially




Education
Health
High tech companies
Overall (Canada, 2002)
Rodney Dangerfield
0.01 % of expenditures
3.0 %
10.0 - 15.0 %
1.88%
Assessment of DE Research

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Many experimental research projects do not
display rigour in their design
Many generalize inappropriately
Cultural, linguistic and environmental factors
often not taken into consideration
Few concerned with teacher and tutor support
Few studies based on current learning,
pedagogical or psychological theories

Olugbemiro Jegede (1999)
A practitioner's perception of
educational research

“answers are too narrow to be meaningful, too
superficial to be instrumental, too artificial to be
relevant, and, on top of that, they usually come
too late to be of any use.” van den Akker 1999
Barriers to Educational Research

It’s nobody’s job


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
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How many in this room have at least 50% of their
job requirement to do research?
Negligible industry support
No large scale focus on particular problems
Nobody keeping score in meaningful terms
Pervasive lack of trust in research efficacy
In sum, lack of an effective research culture

(Burkhardt and Schoenfeld, 2003).
Who Should Do Research?

Action Research

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Students as researchers

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Focused on an authentic problem
Designed and implemented by participants
Includes reflection ands with dissemination
Why are students excluded from this rich learning
experience?
Professional researchers


DE or educational technology researchers
Faculty teaching DE within a different academic perspective
How do we Build a Culture of
Research in Distance Education?
Research Paradigms

Quantitative ~ discovery of the laws
that govern behavior

Qualitative ~ understandings from an
insider perspective

Critical ~ Investigate and expose the
power relationships

Design-based ~ interventions,
interactions and their effect in multiple
contexts
Quantitative Paradigm

Key words like “evidence based” “systematic review”
“scientific research”

employs a scientific discourse derived from the
epistemologies of positivism and realism

Long tradition borrowed from the natural sciences
Since context is so pivotal in education, a great number
of studies must be done to eliminate contextual
variance and combined using meta analysis.
Inordinate support and faith in randomized controlled
studies

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“those who are seeking the strict way of truth
should not trouble themselves about any object
concerning which they cannot have a certainty
equal to arithmetic or geometrical
demonstration”

(Rene Descartes,). 1496-1650
The challenge of meeting criteria for
quantitative study

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Control group assignment rarely possible
Blind assessment not practical
Contextual variables in natural contexts negate
transfer and replicability
‘What works’ in one context, at one time does
not guarantee it will work again
Interventions are never controlled nor identical
Educational results must always be interpreted
Is meta analysis the gold
standard?

Canadian example:
Quantitative Ex. – Meta-Analysis

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Ungerleider and Burns (2003)
Systematic review of effectiveness and
efficiency of ICT
The type of interventions studied were
extraordinary diverse –only criteria was a
comparison group and use of ICT
“Only 10 of the 25 studies included in the indepth review were not seriously flawed, a
sobering statistic given the constraints that
went into selecting them for the review.”
Ungerleider, C., & Burns, T. (2003) . A systematic review of the
effectiveness and efficiency of networked ICT in education . P.38 Ottawa:
Industry Canada. Retireved Jan. 24, 2004 from
http://www.lnt.ca/technology/ict/SystematicReview.pdf
USA Department of Education (2003) guidelines for
Identifying and Implementing Educational Practices
Supported By Rigorous Evidence:
Quantitative Summary
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Can be useful especially when testing well
established and consistent practice.
The need to “control” context often makes
results of little value to practicing professionals
In times of rapid change too early quantitative
testing may mask beneficial positive capacity
Will we ever be able to afford blind reviewed,
random assignment studies?
Qualitative Paradigm
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Many different varieties
Generally answer the question ‘why’ rather then
‘what’ or ‘how much’?
Presents special challenges in DE due to
distance between participants and researchers
Currently most common type of DE research
(Rourke and Szabo, 2002)
st
1
Qualitative Example
 Dearnley
(2003) Student support in
open learning: Sustaining the Process
 Practicing Nurses, weekly F2F tutorial
sessions
 Phenomenological study using grounded
theory discourse
Dearnley (2003)

“Support structures to facilitate
personal and professional
development within this context need
to be in place and attention must be
given to the provision of effective
learner support.” (Dearnley, 2003)”
Johnson H. (2007). Dialogue and the Construction of
Knowledge in E-Learning: Exploring Students' Perceptions
of Their Learning While Using Blackboard's Asynchronous
Discussion Board. EURODL

Four different ways of perceiving online
learning were identified
Practical experience (Rosemary)
 Interconnections (Sarah, Katherine, Cindy)
 Expressing own thoughts (Anthony, David)
 Flexible learning (Larry)

Qualitative Summary

Measure of quality is “critical appraisal
concerning plausibility, internal consistency and
fit to prevailing wisdom”



Burkhardt & Schoenfeld (2003)
But what if the only producers and consumers
are researchers not practitioners?
Often the only answer that makes it to the
practice is “it depends”!
Critical Example
Friesen, N. (submitted). The Experience of Computer Use:
Expert Knowledge and User Know-How. GLIMPSE:
Phenomenology and Media.


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“I will also show how the actual experience of
computer use casts into doubt the educational efficacy
of computers understood as instruments of cognitive
amplification, or simply ‘mindtools.’ ”
Did my failure to save my work or to properly address
my email message arise from a mismatch in "system"
and "user" models?
“user knowledge of the system appears as embodied,
performative and emphatically provisional in nature.”

http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/Computer_Use.doc
Do These Research Paradigms
Meet the Real Needs
of Practicing Distance Educators?
But what type of research has
most effect on practice?
Kennedy (1999) - teachers rate relevance and
value of results from each of major
paradigms.
 No consistent results – teachers are not a
homogeneous group of consumers but they
do find research of value
 “The studies that teachers found to be most
persuasive, most relevant, and most
influential to their thinking were all studies
that addressed the relationship between
teaching and learning.”

But what type of research has
most effect on Practice?

“The findings from this study cast doubt on
virtually every argument for the superiority
of any particular research genre, whether the
criterion for superiority is persuasiveness,
relevance, or ability to influence practitioners’
thinking.” Kennedy, (1999)
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling
is inversely proportional to the value
of the stakes at issue -- that is why
academic politics are so bitter.”
Wallace S. Sayre, 1905-1972
quoted in,
"Issawi's Laws of Social Motion" (1973)
4th Paradigm
Design-Based Research
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Related to engineering and architectural research
Focuses on the design, construction,
implementation and adoption of a learning
initiative
Related to ‘Development Research’
Closest educators have to a “home grown”
research methodology
Interventionist within a real educational context
Action Research on Steroids!
The Contextual Turn


Postmodern assertion of variability pervasively induced
by uniqueness of any particular context
Context of:
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
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Place – virtual, home, classroom, institution etc.
Actors – many individual differences, temporary and long
lasting
Culture – including intra cultural heterogeneity
“Learning, Cognition, Knowing and Context are
irreducibly co-constituted and cannot be treated as
isolated entities or processes” (Barab & Squire, 2004)
Context creates
Content creates Context
deFigueiredo (2005) Learning Contexts a Blueprint for Research,
The Complexity Turn

Increased interest in viewing educational contexts as
complex environments:
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Not possible to precisely forecast or predict behaviour –
explain and promote - but not predict
Interventions from the outside (teacher interventions) are
conditioned and recursively amplified or extinguished by
contextual variables
Resulting in emergent behaviours of organisms
Complexity “at the edge of chaos” provides opportunity for
creativity and necessary change
See Underwood (2000) complexity theory; Pascale et. al
(2000) Surfing the Edge of Chaos, Bennet, (2004)
Organizational Survival
Design
Design
Intervention
Context
Evaluation &
Assessment
(Bannan-Ritland, 2003)
4th Paradigm Design Studies
 iterative,
 process
focused,
 interventionist,
 collaborative,
 multileveled,
 utility oriented,
 theory driven and generative

(Shavelson et al, 2003)
Design Based Example 1 - Athabasca

Tutor Model
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On call 2 hours/week
Part time, problem with
knowledge of institution
knowledge of a single
course
Personal relationship
Subject matter expertise
Personal knowledge base

Call Centre Model

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

Advisor on call 40
hours/week
Full time, steeped in
university environment
All business curriculum
Customer relationship
Refers to academics for
subject matter expertise
Formal FAQ and data
collection


Call Centres:
Answer 80% of student inquiries
Saves over $100,000 /year
Stage 1: Informed Exploration


Literature review, theoretical extrapolation and
expert and participant input
Often an ideal provides a vision and a guide as
well as significant component of the measuring
stick by which the ideal, as instantiated in actions
within a real context, is measured.
Stage 1: Informed Exploration
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Review of call centre literature
Interviews with current tutors and managers
Data collection on current processes and costs
Visit to other call centres, especially those in
related but uncompetitive contexts
Stage 2: Enactment
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Production phase – highly visible
Need for project management, tracking and
documentation
Prototype articulation, design and construction
Designs should be widely circulated and
critiqued
Stage 2: Enactment
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Design and coded using Lotus Notes
Project management, data collection on
development problems and costs,
Pilot testing
Multiple iterations
Stage 3 Local Evaluation
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Interviews, focus groups with call centre staff
Student satisfaction surveys
Student interviews
Analysis of transaction logs and FAQ
Cost analysis
Interviews with tutors, union
Stage 3 Local Evaluation


Multi-methodological evaluation of the
intervention
Iterative moving from formative to summative
evaluation
Stage 4: Broader Impact Evaluation
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Generate and advance a particular set of theoretical
constructs that transcends the ..contexts in which they
were generated, selected or refined” (Barab & Squire,
2004)
Use of thick description and qualitative transference
Work to expand and develop theory
Tools and conceptual models to understand and adjust
both the context and the intervention
Value of an intervention lies in its capacity to effect
positive change – not in the scientific significance of
the results
Call for national and international clearinghouse of
phase 4 evaluations (Collins et al. 2004)
Stage Four - Trials in Multiple
Context
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Currently four help desks operating at Athabasca
Continuing evaluation showing NSD between
perceptions of value by students between tutor and call
centre model
Increased use of web services decreasing need for
either tutors or call centers ie Am I ready for AU
adaptive testing
Further research analyzing institutional resistance to
change
Design-Based Study #2



A work very much in progress
Social software solutions for continuous
enrollment courses
But what type of interaction meets students
needs, is cost effective and is least restrictive on
freedom of both learners and teachers?
Stage 1: Informed Exploration

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
Review of literature on interaction and self directed
study
Interviews with course developers, faculty in regard to
experience with social interventions
Telephone interviews with others around the world
involved in continuous enrollment DE programming
Survey of students in classes with social interventions
Anderson, Annand and Wark 2005 Having your Cake
and eating it, 2005. Austariasia Journal of Educational
Technology
Two Solitudes of
Distance Education
Collaborative,
Distance education
Independent Study
1st gen. correspondence
3rd gen. video, audio
and computer conf
2nd gen. telecourses
Type I
Type C
Information
Technology
Communications
Technology
AU Undergrad
AU Grad
AU Future ??
Type S Distance Education
Independent Study
1st gen. correspondence
2nd gen. telecourses
Type I
Information
Technology
Socially
Enhanced
Independent
Learning
Collaborative,
Distance education
3rd gen. video, audio
and computer conf
Type S
Social
Technology
AU Undergrad
Type C
Communications
Technology
AU Grad
AU Future ??
Learning Freedom

Paulsen’s (1993) theory of cooperative freedom:
Freedom of space
 Freedom of pace
 Freedom of time
 Freedom of media
 Freedom of content
 Freedom of access
 + Freedom of relationship (Anderson)



But these freedoms are compromised by the
interactive, paced and collaborative form of 3rd
generation DE that is based on Type C
technologies
Is the value of the social, paced and
collaborative learning of sufficient magnitude to
justify these restrictions?
Educational Social Technology
(EST)


“Networked tools that support and encourage learning through
face-to-face and virtual social interactions while retaining
individual control over time, space, presence, activity, identity and
community.” (Anderson, 2005)
Social software are tools that support communication
using the five ‘devices’ of identity, presence,
relationships, conversations and groups. (Butterfield,
2003)
Stage 1 Research questions

What tools, learning activities and incentives are
needed to allow students in learner-paced,
continuous enrollment courses to provide social,
cognitive and teaching presence to each other?
Survey results
78% of self-paced student respondents indicated that
they would interact with other students as long as
they were able to proceed through the course at their
own pace.
95% of student respondents reported a desire to
access the work of other students either currently
or previously enrolled in the courses.
Preferred Mode of that interaction:
• 70% preferred asynchronous media like email and
computer conferencing,
• 27% preferred a combination of synchronous and
asynchronous technologies
• only 3% preferred synchronous interaction alone
(for example, audio conferences or face-to-face
interaction).
Stage 1 summary




Interviews and survey of students
Review of the interaction literature
Investigate social software tools
Develop research questions and methodology
Stage 2: Enactment





Select and install an instance of elgg
Me2u@athabascau.ca
Develop support strategies and documentation
Pilot testing (faculty, undergraduate and graduate
classes)
Develop new instructional designs
Successive iterations
Stage 2: Enactment

Social software typically supports:
Individual and group Wiki, Blog, Events,
Tasks, Polls.
 User profiles.
 Friend of friend
 Interest sharing, group formation and
access control
 RSS
 Connections on and off line

http://elgg.net
Technologies of MDE 663 Fall 2006
M2U.Athabascau.ca
Moodle
Content
Admin
Asynchronous Int.
Blogging
Connections
Portal
Products
Learning Objects
CMAP
Elluminate
Real Time
Pacing
Social Presence
Furl
Dissemination
Knowledge Polling
Stage 3 Local Evaluation






Ethics clearance and resolving privacy issues
Interviews, focus groups with developers and
faculty
Student satisfaction surveys
Student interviews
Analysis of transaction logs
Cost analysis using completion rate data
Usefulness over 8 Educ Functions
BookMarks
Profiles
Web Conf
Cmap
Usefulness
RSS
Moodle Discussion
Blogs
Email
0
N= 9 of 13
1
2
3
4
5
Supporting Social and
Feeling Connected
Profiles
Web Conf
RSS
Usefulness
Discussion
Blogs
Email
0
1
N= 9 of 13
2
3
4
5
6
Mastering Knowledge Objectives
BookMarks
Profiles
Web Conf
Cmap
Knowledge
RSS
Discussion
Email
Blogs
0
N= 9 of 13
1
2
3
4
5
Stage 1-3 Iterations
Adding functionality
 Testing new designs and learning activities
 Reacting to Organizational Change

 Think
staff development and redefinition of
learning roles
 Think decentralization – students developing
unanticipated use of system
Stage 4: Broader Impact
Evaluation & Theorizing


Publishing of results
Trials in different contexts






Use in paced and unpaced courses
Use in different disciplines
Collaboration with international ELGG groups
Synthesis of application in different contexts
Adoption of Innovation framework
Theorizing: Does Educational Social Software allow
scaleable, high quality, learning while maximizing
learner freedoms?
Design-based Research: Conclusion



Methodology developed by educators for
educators
Developed from American pragmatism –
Dewey (Anderson, 2005)
Recent Theme Issues:




The Journal of the Instructional Sciences, (13, 1, 2004),
Educational Researcher (32, 1, 2003) and
Educational Psychologist (39, 4, 2004)
See bibliography at
http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSIGs/Desi
gnBasedSIG/

My article at
www.cjlt.ca/abstracts.html
Building the Research Culture



Better dissemination within a combined
research/practitioner communities
Better tools
More funding; less fighting
Online Journals

International Review of Research on Open and
Distance Learning www.irrodl.org
CIDER.ATHABASCAU.CA
A Tale of 3 books
Open Access
72,000 downloads plus
indiv. chapters
400 hardcopies sold @ $50.00
Free at
cde.athabascau.ca/online_book
Commercial publisher
934 copies sold at $52.00
Buy at Amazon!!
E-Learning for the
21st Century
Commercial Pub.
1200 sold @
$135.00
2,000 copies in
Arabic Translation
@ $8.
Conclusion
•
•
•
•
DE Research is grossly under-resourced to meet
the magnitude of opportunity and demand.
Paradigm wars are unproductive.
Design-based research offers a promising new
research design model.
Web 2.0 enhanced interaction (multiformat, synch,
asynch, immersive environments) may offer key to
more effective knowledge growth and exchange.
Conclusion
“Wisdom is fed equally from practical, theoretical, and ethical
knowledge and from a large quantity of reflected experience”
Otto Peters, 2003 p. 137
Your Comments or Questions
Most Welcomed !
Terry Anderson
terrya@athabascau.ca
Research “philosophy for
professionals” Ulrich 2006
reflective competence is:
•self-critical: the effort of systematically
examining one’s own premises through selfreflection and dialogue, with a view to carefully
qualifying the meaning and validity of one’s
claims;
•emancipatory: working actively to help
others in emancipating themselves from one’s
claims, as well as from theirs; and
•ethically alert: making transparent to oneself
and to others the value implications of one’s
claims, and limiting these claims accordingly.