Handbook of Design in Educational Technology

1 The Practice of Educational/Instructional Design

Peggy A. Ertmer, Martin L. Parisio, and Dewa Wardak

What is Design?

Design has been defined in a number of ways, with designers from various fields (e.g., architecture, fashion, and education) conceptualizing and defining their work in slightly different ways. Although design can be used to describe both a process and a product (Smith & Boling, 2009), in this chapter, we focus primarily on the process, or ‘work’, of design. Thus, design is defined here as a goal directed, problem-solving activity (Archer, 1965; Rowland, 1993), which results in the creation of something useful that did not exist previously (Reswick, 1965). Furthermore, we include the idea, proposed by Cross (2007), which describes ...