Using Design-Based Research for Virtual Worlds Research Projects

This paper discusses the potential of language centres in higher education as laboratories for innovation. Despite their hybrid character as central service providers that are also defined by their teaching, their positioning at the academic periphery, and the lack of a mandate to do academic research, language centres still have an obligation to conduct research as a means of promoting innovation. The design-based research (DBR) approach in learning and teaching, in which teaching stakeholders examine learning processes in real situation, offers a suitable opportunity for language centres to overcome the restrictions placed upon them. DBR can be done using existing resources and the innovation potential of a language centre’s teaching staff. The leadership and management of the language centre must be made responsible for providing and/or enabling the necessary structural, material, and cultural conditions for such research. This paper discusses the DBR approach at language centres in higher education and its impact on leadership. It then gives two examples of the successful implementation of DBR at the Language Center of UZH and ETH Zurich.

Higher education in Ecuador face new challenges related to improving the quality of teaching and innovation in students´learning. One of the challenges is to integrate research with teaching activities, academic management, and community engagement. The Design-Based Research (DBR) approach becomes key and strategic for effective education and it allows staff to join an interdisciplinary team and influence their immediate context to improve their teaching practice, ensure the quality of the curriculum design, develop contextualized theories about the educational process. Based on a review of the literature, academic manuscripts of design-based research generated by Ecuadorian researchers and studies conducted in Ecuadorian educational contexts in different sources of information -such as repositories of Ecuadorian universities- in the last six years will be selected. In this way, it is proposed that Design-Based Research provides the fundamental epistemological and methodological horizons for faculty to integrate research with curriculum design and teaching practice. Thus, educational research will be more concrete and applicable in the immediate contexts of the professor for their improvement and innovation, and in turn, the practice itself will reformulate the theory that underpins educational action.

The rapid evolution of Generative AI (Gen AI) and its integration into higher education necessitates a critical evaluation of teaching and learning practices. Many students already use publicly available AI Digital Assistants (p-AIDA) such as ChatGPT for academic purposes. However, there are concerns around the use of such p-AIDA tools, in particular in terms of data privacy, academic integrity, Intellectual Property (IP), and the impact on the quality of education. We therefore explored the perspectives of AI usage with 106 students in two consecutive studies using a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach. Study 1 explored the lived experiences a demoed prototype of an institutional AI Digital Assistant (i-AIDA) with ten distance learning students. Building on these findings, in Study 2 the preliminary results were validated with a cohort of 96 students using an online survey on whether the development of an i-AIDA might mitigate some of these concerns. By comparing i-AIDA with p-AIDA in two studies our research underscores the potential benefits and limitations of in-house Gen AI tools in enhancing learning experiences without compromising academic integrity, IP or privacy.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of science activities prepared through the design-based research (DBR) method on middle school students' creative and critical thinking skills. Design/Methodology/Approach: A quasi-experimental design was employed. The study group consisted of 80 middle school students in Kastamonu, Turkey, randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Design-based science activities were applied in the experimental group, while the control group followed traditional science instruction. Data were collected through pre-tests and post-tests using the Marmara Creative Thinking Dispositions Scale and Marmara Critical Thinking Dispositions Scale. Findings: Results indicated significant improvements in creative and critical thinking dispositions of students in the experimental group compared to the control group. The DBR activities provided students with active problem-solving opportunities, enhancing their ability to generate creative ideas and critically evaluate their work. Highlights: The study highlights that the design-based research approach in science education is more effective than traditional teaching methods in enhancing creative and critical thinking skills. It is recommended for educators and curriculum developers to integrate DBR-driven activities into educational programs.

Over the past couple of decades, remarkable progress occurred in medical education research. However, most of the ongoing research did not seem to have added much to the existing literature. Thus, our understanding has not shown considerable improvement. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine, and a total of six articles were selected based on the suitability with the current review objectives and analyzed. Design-based research targets complex educational problems in the real world, with an ultimate intention to enhance learning among the students and not justify the superiority of one teaching–learning method. In conclusion, the framework of design-based research plays a significant role in the better understanding and resolving of complex educational problems. Further, considering the encouraging results obtained in different educational problems, it is the need of the hour that all the educational researchers should adopt a design-based research approach for gaining an in-depth understanding of the local educational problems.

This paper reports on a longitudinal, design-based research (DBR) study to promote clinical decision making using a virtual patient (VP) simulation for emergency renal care. The VP was piloted with pharmacy students, then offered as an interprofessional learning exercise for pharmacy and medical students, before being introduced as part of the curriculum. In this paper, the DBR framework used to design, implement and evaluate the VP is described. The iterative changes made and implications for the integration of virtual patient simulation in the pharmacy curriculum are discussed.

Software design problems are often characterized as ill-structured because the requirements are not clearly defined. These problems offer various solution paths and the criteria used to select the solution may not be known initially. The expertise and experience of designers play a crucial role in determining the quality of software design. Less experienced designers often tend to prematurely narrow down their options to a single solution without fully exploring the problem-solution space. This tendency has a negative impact on the overall quality of software design. Studies have shown that systematically expanding the problem space before reducing to problem formulation and exploring the solution space before reducing it to a single solution (expand-reduce skills) improves the quality of the design. We have designed and developed a technology-enhanced learning environment (TELE) named Fathom for scaffolding expand-reduce (ER) skills in software design problems in a data structures course. In this paper, we present three cycles of design, development, and evaluation of Fathom based on the design-based research (DBR) approach. In the first DBR cycle, we identified and evaluated Fathom’s pedagogical features in learning ER skills. In the second cycle of DBR, the aim was to improve the design of Fathom for the learning and transfer of ER skills. Fathom was revised in the third cycle of the DBR to scaffold metacognitive skills. The main contribution of this research is pedagogical design for facilitating the learning of expand-reduce skills in solving software design problems.

The purpose of this article is to introduce a design-based research (DBR) approach developed in the field of vocational and continuing education, which is grounded in a pragmatic and phenomenologically inspired enactivist approach to activity. As a design-based methodology, our activity-centered and enactive DBR approach aims to generate knowledge related to design and to identify relevant design principles. After detailing the particularities of an activity-centered and enactive DBR approach, we focus on the results pertaining to design knowledge by identifying two broad design principles for vocational education and training, and five enactivist inspired principles for training design. A significant practical implication for researchers and practitioners in vocational and continuing education and training is that these enactivist inspired design principles provide promising pathways to enhance the connectivity between (i) work experiences, (ii) work and training practices, and (iii) learning contexts.

Design-based research (DBR) is an innovative methodology for co-creation, but potentials, challenges, and differences between methodological ideals and the real-life intervention context are under-researched. This study analyzes the DBR process in which researchers, professionals, and families co-design a family-based intervention to prevent childhood overweight and obesity in a rural municipality. It involves interviews with six key stakeholders in the co-design process. Data were coded and analyzed using systematic text condensation, while the theory of the “social effectiveness of interventions” developed by Rod et al. (2014) was used as an analytical tool for unpacking the co-creation process and exploring methodological barriers and potentials. The DBR approach contributed with a feeling that everyone’s perspective was important, and the professionals got a new perspective on the families’ experiences with healthy living they did not previously consider. We also found that the iterative design process did not fully align with the organizational structures in the municipality or with the needs of stakeholders, leading to friction in the partnership. This study emphasizes the complexity of using an anti-hierarchical approach within a hierarchical context, and the importance of being aware of how the DBR approach shapes the partnership, as well as of how the social dynamics within the partnership shape the design process.

This short paper introduces the concept of Situated Readiness as a set of skills and dispositions required to participate meaningfully across settings and situations, seeing them as networked and intertwined. Following earlier work within the field, networked learning is here understood as learners' connecting of contexts in which they participate, and as their resituation of knowledge and ways of acting across these contexts (Dohn, 2014). The development of the concept of Situated Readiness is based on a conducted study using a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach to investigate, how student teachers at a Danish Teacher Education Program (TEP) transformed knowledge and ways of participation when transitioning between a course and a public-school class. The findings of the study indicate the needs of socio-epistemic skills and dispositions that enable students to resituate, utilise and transform knowledge from known social contexts to new ones e.g. from a learning situation at the TEP to novel situations in school. Situated Readiness is, in this sense, the ability to attune to the specific social and epistemic requirements and demands, also termed "requirement characteristics", pertaining in these new contexts. To aid the analysis of the skills needed to engage in networked situations, an analytical framework of context levels is presented. The framework points out how requirement characteristics at three interacting levels are posed on the learner. The three levels: 1) the life-setting, 2) the activity-internal level and 3) the domain-internal level form a complex whole and as a learner acting competently in a situation, consists of the ability to respond accordingly to this complex whole. The findings of the DBR study points at challenges towards students’ transformation of knowledge between the two settings, suggesting that the development of Situated Readiness on the learners behalf requires educators to design for learning opportunities, that take into account, how settings and situations are networked and that students are given opportunities and support to recognise these temporally connections as part of their learning trajectories. The lack of explicit articulation of the sameness and differences between the setting leaves the students to realize and attune to these by themselves, which the study shows, is a major challenge to students, who have limited experiences with teaching in practice.

There is a lack of empirical studies incorporating background music (BM) and sounds (SFX) to instructional videos to facilitate students’ learning. A design-based research study was conducted to enhance student engagement and motivation including four iterative formative evaluations. In the first iteration, graduate students’ reactions were examined to understand the potential influences of BM and SFX in the learning experience. The second iteration consisted of a small-group session focused on describing students’ levels of engagement, motivation, and learning while using videos that included BM and SFX. In the third iteration, a field test was conducted to explore the effects of BM and SFX on students’ engagement, motivation, and learning. The fourth iteration collected experts’ feedback to inform future research and practice. Results showed beneficial effects of BM and SFX for motivation, engagement, and potential learning. Practical guidelines are suggested for faculty and instructional designers to implement BM and SFX on instructional videos. The paper concludes by posing an emergent theory: the design and integration of BM and SFX need to balance the motivational improvements with the challenges of cognitive dissonance and overload.

This article reports on how design-based research methodology was used to guide a line of intervention research that developed, implemented, revised, and evaluated online learning science curricula for middle school students, including general education students and English language learners (primarily of Hispanic origin). The iterative, design-based research approach was carried out in two stages with multiple steps per stage: (a) stage 1, or informed exploration, identified and described the problem under investigation; and (b) stage 2, or enactment, redesigned previously developed online science units, implemented each unit in case studies, and completed a feasibility evaluation. The present paper focuses primarily on the second stage, demonstrating the process by which online science units were repeatedly refined with input from stakeholders, and then examined for their feasibility to implement, usefulness for helping teachers engage with students, and potential to effectively deepen science knowledge. Data were drawn from multiple sources, including teacher logs, student and teacher surveys, student notebooks, content assessments, and focus groups. Results indicate that the online science units were feasible to implement, usable, and helpful. The data-driven, design-based research methodology proved to be both practical and efficacious, and underscored the critical importance of involving all stakeholders in the process of curriculum creation and refinement. This work offers a model for the development of constructivist science instructional materials for English learners using online, multimedia technology.

The Purdue Repository for Online Teaching and Learning (PoRTAL) was developed as an Open Educational Resource (OER) for graduate students and faculty in higher education settings to enhance their online teaching skills and strategies. The PoRTAL team used a design-based research approach (DBR; Wang & Hannafin, Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(4), 5–23, 2005). In this study context, we used Van Tiem et al.’s (2012) model to identify problems faced by instructors who struggled with or were new to online teaching from a Human Performance Technology (HPT) standpoint. To address the identified needs, we created resources for online teaching and embedded our research within practical activities to further study our design process. Our efforts resulted in an HPT-OER Model for Designing Digital Repositories. The purpose of this paper is to share the DBR process that we used to develop an OER repository within an HPT model.

In this project we are investigating how generative artificial intelligence (GAI) can be didactically integrated into teaching with the goal to strengthen students' AI literacy. The focal point is creating an AI lab in the form of a scenario-based game, where journalism and communication students use AI tools collaboratively to produce content in a realistic scenario. Students must produce content using GAI programmes in the scenario. After the game they must reflect on the AI tools' relevance and ethical implications in the scenario and the profession as such. The students’ experiences and critical reflections are essential in the project. We also examine how we as educators can design the AI lab using GAI tools. In the making of the scenario and the tasks in the game, we have used ChatGPT and Midjourney to develop specific roles and situations of conflict during the game. The Gamemaster has also used ChatGPT during the games to develop the tasks for the groups. This makes the development of the scenario flexible and enables turning the story and the tasks in different directions. The project is grounded in Reflective Practice-based Learning (RPL) and follows a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach.

<p class="3">From a design perspective, the intentionality of students to engage in surface or deep learning is often experienced through prescribed activities and learning tasks. Educators understand that meaningful learning can be furthered through the structural and organizational design of the online environment that motivates the student towards task completion. However, learning engagement is unique for each student. It is dependent on both how students learn and their intentions for learning. Based on this challenge, the design of online discussions becomes a pedagogical means in developing students’ intentionality for the adoption of strategies leading to deep learning. Through a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach, iterative design of online learning components for undergraduate field experience courses were studied. For this paper, the focus of the research is on examining factors that influenced deep and surface levels of learning in online discussion forums. The results indicate that design factors (i.e., student engagement, group structures, and organization) influence the nature and degree of deep learning. From the findings, two implications for practice are shared to inform the design and scaffolding of online discussion forums to foster deep approaches to student learning.</p>