Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 59, Issue 2, September 2012, Pages 722-731
Computers & Education

A case study on the design of learning interfaces

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.03.009Get rights and content

Abstract

The design of educational software interfaces is a complex task, given its high domain dependency and multidisciplinary nature. It requires that teachers’ knowledge and pedagogical beliefs be incorporated into the interface, posing a challenge to both teachers and designers, as they have to act as partners from the earliest phases of the process, sharing their knowledge. The present work investigates the strategies designers used when paired with experienced teachers, to design two interfaces on chemistry, evaluating how designers work with subjects they know little about, in the initial phases of the design process. Our observations demonstrate that although experienced and non-experienced designers use different strategies to couple with the design task, both approached the task in a depth-first manner. These results should not be generalized, because few subjects were investigated, but point to the importance of being familiar with the knowledge domain – which poses a challenge for designers.

Highlights

► The experienced designer used the approach “integrate as fast as you can”. ► The inexperienced designer used the approach “structure then design”. ► Both can be classified as depth-first strategies. ► Our result does not match Goel’s, probably because the domain was unfamiliar.

Introduction

The prevalence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for educational environments justifies the urge to understand how to better design educational artifacts. Despite accumulated experience and knowledge, it still poses a great challenge. Winters and Mor (2008) state that the methodological weakness in the development [design] of such artifacts might be the reason they did not have the desired engaging effect [in educational settings]. However, the fact that it is difficult to design, and that design itself is difficult to teach (Schön, 1983), might be an explanation for this scenario. Lawson and Dorst (2009) report several declarations of professional designers and teachers describing their practice as a mixture of passion and uncertainty. From a theoretical point of view, this “feeling of uncertainty” could be explained by the assumption that design requires a different kind of thinking – a cognitive process that cannot be described by the symbolic information-processing framework developed by Newell and Simon (1972), as it deals with “fluid” states and representations (Goel, 1995). Defining design as a problem-solving activity – for which Newell and Simon’s problem-solving concepts are sufficient – opposes two of the main theories on design cognition: Simon’s (1996) and Schön’s (1983). These authors described design in opposite ways, but both hold that solving a design problem [or facing a design situation, according to Schön’s terminology] is very different from approaching a “well-defined problem”, because designers do not have algorithmic paths to follow from problem to solution.

Section snippets

Control strategies for approaching design problems

The class of problems designers face has implications on their strategy to approach the design task (also called control strategy): it could be breadth-first, depth-first or an adaptive combination of both (Visser, 1994). According to Ball and Ormerod (1995), a breadth-first strategy has many characteristics, such as a top-level design goal reduced into a number of sub-goals, which are decomposed until a requisite level of design detail is reached – no sub-goal is explored in depth.

What is so special about educational software interfaces?

As a genuine design problem, educational software interfaces share a relevant characteristic with all design problems: they belong to the same class (be it ill-defined, wicked or indeterministic). Besides, there are two relevant characteristics: (1) they focus on teaching and learning, which are complex, multifaceted endeavors, and (2) they cannot be designed, even in the conceptual phase, by a single person, nor by a team with a single area of expertise.

To say that educational software is

How is educational software designed?

The ideal educational software design team has several agents. These include, for example, teachers and instructional designers, analysts and programmers with many backgrounds, graphic, motion and interaction designers, writers and text-reviewers. Ideally, these team members would also share knowledge on relevant issues such as technology limitations and possibilities, design practices, classroom routines, and teaching practice and learning theories.

Siozos, Palaigeorgiou, Triantafyllakos, and

Material and methods: observations of a learning interface design session

The subjects of our observations were a digital/graphical designer with eight years of experience (subject ED), a design student, who was in the middle of the graduation course (subject ND), a teacher who has a master degree in chemistry education (teacher TA) and a professor with a PhD in chemistry education (professor TB). Both chemists were co-workers for the past two years. The group was divided into the following pairs: ED + TA and ND + TB. We chose to pair the teachers with designer with

The method: verbal analysis

The Verbal Analysis method (Chi, 1997) was chosen as a methodological framework because it focuses on the interpretation of representations such as verbalisations, drawings and gestures. There are other approaches to design research, but as this debate is outside the scope of this article, we refer the reader to Craig (2001). The non-optional method steps, as found in Chi, are: (1) to segment the protocols (video records of the design session); (2) to develop or choose a coding scheme or

Results

Following Chi’s methodological proposal (Chi, 1997), before presenting quantitative data, significant episodes that happened during the design session are presented and discussed. This presentation has the aim to provide an overview of the main observations we made on the sessions.

Conclusions

The results from observations and quantitative results support the conclusion that designers ED and ND followed two different strategies to design educational software interfaces: “integrate as fast as you can” (designer ED) and “structure then design” (designer ND). Although designer ED is an expert in his field, he/she did not proceed in a breadth-first manner, as both strategies are similar to depth-first approaches. Designer ED’s strategy could not be labeled “opportunistic” either, as it

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Brazilian Research Agency CAPES for its financial support of the research group and to the National Computation Centre CESUP/UFRGS for the use of their recording studio and laboratory.

References (42)

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