Instructional Design Practice

The effect of design layering is to define an alternative approach to instructional design practice. Instead of seeing design problem solving in terms of a ("waterfall") process to be executed, it encourages the designer to view the artifact being designed in the abstract and to identify the functionalities it must perform. This leads to the realization that each functionality can be considered as a semi-independent design sub-problem. This is how layers are formed. Each sub-problem comes with the constraint that all sub-problem solutions must function seamlessly but with the benefit that all sub-problems can be dealt with separately, so long as certain design rules govern the manner in which the functions interface. (See Baldwin, C. & Clark, K. (2000). Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Exploring the implications of this idea led to writing: "Coming at Design from a Different Angle: Functional Design", a paper presented at the 2006 Research Symposium of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (Bloomington, IN, June). An article on "The Inpterplay of Learning Objects and Design Architectures" published in Educational Technology (Jan-Feb, 2006).

Contact me at:   andy_gibbons@byu.edu