Imagining a Science of Instructional Design

Instructional design (ID) in its short life has been dominated by behaviorist approaches (e.g. Dick and Carey and ISD models) despite critiques focusing on issues of practice as well as theory. In the past decade, a number of alternative approaches to teaching and practice have grown out of research with a more cognitivist or constructivist flavor. Nonetheless, little research has addressed the questions "What constitutes good instructional design?" "How do we create it?" This panel representing research in varied design domains (software, performance art, industrial products, as well as ID) will describe a growing body of work on design as an intellectual discipline in fields other than instruction, and suggest how new ideas and methods could contribute to the development of a "science of ID".