Informing designs for learning when shifting to digital
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Informing designs for learning when shifting to digital Stefan Hrastinski1 Accepted: 10 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper is a response and considers practical and design implications of the article, The process of designing for learning: understanding university teachers’ design work by Bennett et al. (Educ Technol Res Dev 65:125–145, 2017). Bennett et al. guide us in better understanding teachers’ design practices and in discussions on how such practices could be improved. A key contribution of the article is presenting a descriptive model of the design process. As such, the article is focused on teachers’ current design work, while giving more limited attention to how teachers’ design practice could be improved. When looking forward, this response emphasizes that teachers should be encouraged to inform their designs for learning and iteratively improve their designs based on reflection and evaluation. If teachers take time to look into what is known and deliberately learn more along the way through reflection and evaluation, they will improve their understanding of how to design for learning. Keywords Informed design · Design for learning · Shifting to digital · Reflection · Evaluation There have been rather few studies on how teachers design for learning. One exception is the article The process of designing for learning: understanding university teachers’ design work (Bennett et al. 2017). A key contribution of the article is uncovering important dimensions of teachers’ design practices. The researchers developed a descriptive model of the design process based on interviews with 30 teachers from 16 Australian universities. Teachers followed a top-down approach in which they considered the learning outcomes, scope of content, ideas for activities and assessment strategy. Then, they specified the unit in detail, verifying against the more general ideas and adjusted if necessary. When teaching a unit, student feedback sometimes prompted the teacher to make changes of a more detailed nature. More than half of the teachers described that they identified future changes, typically after the unit was completed, but some also made notes during the unit. The design work extended before, while, and after a unit was taught, and emphasized the importance of reflection in teachers’ design practice. A limitation of the article is that most * Stefan Hrastinski [email protected] 1
Division of Digital Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Osquars backe 31, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
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interviewees were experienced teachers who were part of professional academic bodies, indicating that they were more experienced and engaged in teaching and learning. The article is focused on teachers’ current design work, while giving more limited attention to how teachers’ design practice could be improved. This response suggests that the findings of the article could be understood and extended by considering design for learning as an informed practice. Teachers could be inf
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