Bollen, L., van der Meij, H., Leemkuil, H. and McKenney, S. (2015). In search of design principles for developing digital learning and performance support for a student design task. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 31(5), 500-520.

I found this paper by searching for papers on the Twente Educational Model (TEM, or TOM in Dutch). The paper is one of the articles in a special issue on educational design research (EDR), specifically one of the articles located in the early stages of EDR. The context of the paper is on the design and use of a digital environment for second year psychology students within which the students could themselves design a learning environment as a project within the module they were enrolled in. That makes this paper something of a design turducken, given that the design of the environment was itself then studied as EDR.

The authors provide a substantial amount of detail on the methodology guiding their creation of the digital environment, that of Learning by Design (LBD) and also provide detail on what the environment looked like and how the students used it. I shall not summarise that here. (Can we take it as given that ethical approval was sought and granted for the quite intrusive mining and subsequent publication of student access data?) There are others characteristics of this paper that interest me more, that is, design research and TOM.

Every teacher tries things in class to see if they help the students learn. What makes any such intervention stand out and be labelled “educational design research”? Does the intervention have to be built on theory whose printed publication the teacher can hold in her hand, or can it be based on years of experience and intuition? If the intervention is only tried once does that make it not EDR, but if you go back and try again, does that iteration make it EDR? Is it only EDR if it gets published? Is it only EDR if it makes an impact on the theoretical landscape? The authors say “This [design and construction] phase involves rational, purposeful consideration of knowledge and concepts that can be used to address specific problems in practice. As potential solutions are generated and explored, the underlying theoretical and practical rationales are elaborated. This allows the design framework to be evaluated and critiqued.” (p. 500) This definition or description suggests that any thoughtful teaching intervention can be described as EDR. The definition given in the editorial of this special issue “EDR is an intervention and process-oriented approach that uses a variety of methods to examine the development and implementation of instructional solutions to current educational problems” (p. i) also suggests that thoughtful teaching intervention can all be defined as EDR. I struggle with this idea. I’ll need to read more about it as this is not a topic with which I have much familiarity, but it seems to me that it only really starts to earn the name of “design research” if there have been iterations and refinements. In which case the first instance of any intervention only retroactively can be framed as a first stage in EDR – when it first happens it is just a teaching intervention like any other. I admit, this is not something I fully understand. I am cautious of slapping fancy labels on things which don’t deserve them, but we shouldn’t be research snobs and fail to see the worth in what amounts to everyday research in the real classroom. Anyway, food for thought and I should come back to this.

It is 2018 and I am new to UT. The Twente Educational Model (TEM) is the flagship pedagogical model at UT which many people are working hard to make a success. It is a forward thinking educational model for a university trying to educate its students for an unknown, technological, global, entrepreneurial future. Part of my role here will be to see what is working and what is not and how we can be better educators of ours students in this rapidly changing world. The paper I am talking about here was published in 2015, probably about data gathered in 2014, so still very early in TEM’s existence. (September 2013 is when it was rolled out, I believe?) The authors describe TEM in terms familiar today, but then they refer to their own particular context as TEM, that is the digital environment they designed (in Moodle) for their psychology students to use. e.g. “data logs that were recorded in TOM” (p. 509) or “accessing TOM through a VPN connection” (p. 501) . Either I do not understand how the term “TOM” (or TEM) is to be used or the way it is used has changed over the last few years; I suspect the latter. So, while the paper emerges in a literature search for papers on TEM, TEM actually features very little in the paper in its 2018 meaning. That being said, there were some intriguing snippets, for example “[r]ecently, the Board of Directors of the university gave the stimulus for an important renovation of the curriculum for the bachelor programs in all faculties. This led to a uniform roster that better facilitated students to choose from the courses offered throughout the university.”(p. 500). I am interested in the tension of providing mathematics courses which need to be the same every time they are taught in every context so that they can form part of this “uniform roster” yet can still blend into each engineering or science or medical module in order to be part of the TOM ideal of courses clustered around projects. I have not yet been here long enough to see how successful this identity split is working, but I intend to find out!

I found that this paper gave me a lot to think about although not about its central topic, more about the educational design research framework and the local university context and discourse.

Do not treat this blog entry as a replacement for reading the paper. This blog post represents the understanding and opinions of Torquetum only and could contain errors, misunderstandings or subjective views.
Kopcha, T.J., Schmidt, M.M. and McKenney, S. (2015). Editorial 31(5) Special issue on educational design research (EDR) in post-secondary learning environments. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 31(5), i-ix.

I am interested in reading about and around the Twente Educational Model (TEM/TOM). Searching for literature online, I found the first of the articles in this special issue as well as the editorial, which mentions it. While I am chiefly interested in the first article, reading the editorial has made me quite keen to read a few of the others.

The editors begin their editorial with a definition of EDR: “EDR is an intervention and process-oriented approach that uses a variety of methods to examine the development and implementation of instructional solutions to current educational problems” (p. i). They give three reasons for the need of this issue, (1) There is some justified concern in the quality of EDR research, so “transparent examples of EDR are needed to fuel the discourse about the practical and scientific value of this approach” (p. ii), (2) he nature of EDR projects to span iterations and contexts and to involve a great deal of data can make it difficult to publish anything process related in the traditional literature and (3) the need for good examples has increased, particularly ones which show variation and testing across multiple iterations.

The editors impose a structure of three EDR phases into which the six papers in the special issue fit. The phases are analysis and exploration, design and construction, and evaluation and reflection. The authors of the papers situate their work within these phases, we are told. Below, I very briefly provde a few words on each of the articles, as described in the editorial:
  • 2 articles which discuss projects early in the EDR process
    • In search of design principles for developing digital learning and performance support for a student design task; second year psychology students; data-driven approach; Twente Educational Model (TOM/TEM); an outcome is three design principles which can inform further iterations
    • Re-designing university courses to support collaborative knowledge creation practices; literature-driven approach; design principles established and then integrated into carefully chosen courses.
  • 3 articles that span cycles and are located in the middle of the ADR implementation spectrum
    • Exploring college students’ online help-seeking behaviour in a flipped classroom with a web-based help-seeking tool; four design principles identified from the literature; three EDR cycles; mixed methods. The editors particularly praise this article for the clarity with which the authors connect theory and design; they recommend this article for anyone seeking to develop their own EDR manuscript.
    • Professional learning in higher education: Understanding how academics interpret student feedback and access resources to improve their teaching; three phases of design-based research on an interactive online environment providing resources and support to faculty based on student evaluations of teaching; concludes with a return to the theory on which the tool was built.
    • R-NEST: Design-based research for technology enhanced reflective practice in initial teacher education; digital storytelling to enhance reflective practice; 6 years and three cycles; scales from prototype to full-scale implementation.
  • 1 article that is to the mature end of the EDR spectrum
    • Conjecture mapping to optimize the educational design research process; “establishes a set of design principles from data collected across multiple iterations and across multiple contexts” (p. v). Multiple phases, two contexts, 5 years; adult learners transitioning to online learning; a conjecture map [sounds intriguing]; not only development of design principles, but example of how comparisons across contexts and iterations can enable analytic generalisation and inform theory.

The editors conclude their discussion of the articles with a closing article which looks at all six contributions and finds commonalities as well as unique contributions. The concluding author argues for EDR researchers to have a shared and long term agenda in order to achieve significant impact.

I have a PhD student engaged in EDR. I shall manage the temptation to be distracted from my TEM/TOM focus by recommending this special issue to her attention (if she has not already found it; she probably has).

Do not treat this blog entry as a replacement for reading the paper. This blog post represents the understanding and opinions of Torquetum only and could contain errors, misunderstandings or subjective views.

April 2021

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