Jason K. McDonald

This qualitative study explored how instructional designers pursue “quality” in online courses. Through semi‑structured interviews, the authors identified four themes linking course quality with designers’ autonomy, collaboration in teams, tensions between autonomy and collaboration, and strategies for coping with limits on both. Implications highlight the creative, affective, and judgment‑based workarounds designers use beyond formal processes to realize their aims for quality.

Arguing that online/blended learning often over‑privileges making and artifacts, the authors propose a model of relational course design grounded in Levinas’s and Buber’s philosophies. Using a course on interfaith leadership and ethics as a case, they articulate principles for relational pedagogy that foreground human relationships and ethical responsibility in course design.

Using a critical case study of two faculty and one instructional designer, this paper critiques calculative and optionalized design practices in higher education course design. Such practices tended to distort teaching ideals, constrain relationships with students, and create ambiguity about design’s contribution to educators’ experience. The authors discuss implications for studying and practicing online/blended course design.

An ethnographic case study of a university instructional design team shows that designers devote significant time to mundane refinement tasks (revising, updating, fixing) that are distinct from specialized design or innovation work. These “refining” practices meaningfully contribute to how designers both achieve and make sense of course quality in context, with implications for research and practice.

This case study investigates how members of a university instructional design team draw “distinctions of worth” as they evaluate their motives and contributions in team pursuits. Three themes emerged: such distinctions can guide decision‑making more than project goals; competing distinctions are difficult to reconcile; and distinctions may involve unanticipated costs. Implications are offered for managing and studying design teams.

The authors call for greater development and use of “originary theory” in instructional design—theory generated within the field for its own purposes—contrasted with imported theory from other disciplines. They review limitations of over‑reliance on imports and illustrate how originary theorizing (e.g., conceptualizing ID as a design discipline and offering alternative views of learners) can better support design practice.

Through in‑depth interviews with six design studio instructors, this study examines how critiques structure studio practice to pursue three kinds of moral goods: goods for student development, for instructors’ self‑cultivation, and for other stakeholders. The paper discusses how multiple goods act simultaneously and why critiques matter in the moral ecology of studio pedagogy.

This study investigated how instructional design students perceived informal peer critiques in studio courses. Beginning students reported more perceived value than advanced students, and suggested more frequent/longer critiques. The authors discuss how informal peer critique can complement other feedback in studio pedagogy and identify avenues for future research.

Using action research, ID faculty at multiple institutions collaborated to share philosophies, strategies, resources, and course products for teaching introductory instructional design. The project produced a cyclical, theory‑based model for cross‑institutional faculty collaboration and practical insights for preparing novice instructional designers.

Through a focused review of ID studio case reports, this paper maps studio features and activities to principles of Model‑Centered Instruction (MCI). The analysis offers 17 options educators can use to structure ID studios and argues that aligning studio practice with MCI can help instructors experiment with improvements more systematically.

Interviews with practicing distance‑learning designers across sectors reveal tensions in practicing empathy: knowing how much learner analysis is enough, which stakeholders to empathize with, and how to navigate constraints. The authors argue that more empathic practice can improve designed online learning environments and outline directions for future research.

The article argues that when instructional designers adopt narrow views of practice they risk falling into formulaic routines. Embracing the creative spirit of design—its imaginative, creation‑oriented, and interdisciplinary character—can help designers remain flexible and perceptive, better achieving the field’s aspirational ideals for effective and innovative instruction.

Drawing on interviews with eight successful filmmakers, this study identifies storytelling principles that can inform instructional design. The analysis shows how techniques used in compelling films can be translated to educational contexts to engage learners and support inventive approaches to designing instructional environments.

The paper explicates criteria known as Technology I, II, and III that differentiate reductive, formulaic approaches from reflective, systemic approaches to solving educational problems. Using problem‑based learning as a case, the authors identify reasons for a “technological gravity” that pulls practice toward reductive methods and recommend adopting Technology III criteria to achieve designers’ goals.

Proposes criteria distinguishing formulaic from reflective approaches to solving educational problems (Technology I, II, III). An analysis of problem‑based learning reports reveals a ‘technological gravity’ pulling practice toward reductive methods; the authors suggest three strategies and adoption of Technology III criteria to maintain alignment with innovative principles. citeturn14search0

This theoretical analysis compares mid‑20th‑century programmed instruction with contemporary online learning, focusing on their underlying assumptions. Four assumptions that contributed to programmed instruction’s demise—ontological determinism, materialism, social efficiency, and technological determinism—also underlie current theory and practice and may threaten instructional technology’s long‑term viability.