"The development of instructional software is a complex process, posing high demands to the technical and didactical expertise of developers. Domain specialists rather than professional developers are often responsible for it, but authoring tools with pre-structured templates claim to compensate for this limited experience. This study compares instructional software products made by developers with low production experience (n = 6) and high production experience (n = 8), working with a template-based authoring tool. It is hypothesized that those with high production experience will be more productive and create software with a higher didactical quality than those with low production experience, whereas no differences with regard to technical and authoring quality are expected. The results show that the didactical quality was unsatisfactory and did not differ between groups. Nevertheless the templates compensated for differences in experience because the technical and authoring quality was equal for both groups, indicating that templates enable domain specialists to participate successfully in the production process."
The first question is "Why are the domain specialists (i.e., subject matter experts) the ones building the courseware?" The authors point out two reasons in the introduction: (1) many times very specific requirements for custom-made instructional software benefit from the use of domain specialists as the developers because "they already possess the necessary domain knowledge and have easy access to relevant--multimedia-- resources (Spector and Muraida, 1997)" (p. 648); and (2) "professional instructional designers and software producers are not easily available or too expensive to hire." (p. 648).
The second question is "What is didactical quality?" The authors define this as "the extent to which desired learning outcomes are attained in an efficient manner." (p.648) Combined with technical quality ("...the extent to which the software takes care of the input, information processing, and output as intended" (p. 648)), these two elements together are necessary to "stimulate the desired learning processes." (p. 648) Assessing didactical quality can be accomplished by using a Kirkpatrick Level 2 evaluation of the learners achievement of the learning objectives and/or an analysis of the use of specific instructional principles in the software. The authors reference Merrill's (2002) five learning principles: "(1) the use of real-life problems as the driving force for learning; (2) the proper activation of relevant prior knowledge; (3) the demonstration of useful problem-solving approaches and procedures by the learner; (4) the practical application of those approaches and procedures by the learner; and (5) the integration of what has been learned into real-world activities." (p. 648) However, the authors point out that it is not merely the presence of these five principles that determines the didactical quality of instruction but rather the way in which they are applied.
Why is this an issue? Because frequently domain specialists forget what it was like for them in the beginning, before they had 10, 15, 20, or even 30 years of experience in the field for which they are developing instructional software. Without an understanding of learning theory, let alone the learning traits of their target audience, or of instructional design theory, they frequently develop instructional materials that center around everything they know about the topic and end up "deep in the weeds," so to speak.
This study looked at the effects the templates had on the development process, the quality of the software, and the level of support perceived by the developers. As expected, the experienced group produced more software than the novice group and did so with more information and question elements, but the difference was small, possibly because of the shortened time span for the exercise. Also as expected, the templates helped to compensate for the novices' lack of experience with regard to authoring and technical quality. The novices were only inexperienced with regard to instructional software production, not their domain specialty. Finally, it was expected that the experienced group would incorporate a higher didactical quality than their counterparts, but that both groups' products would evidence sufficient didactic quality. However, although the developers' assessment of their own achievement in this area outstripped the evaluation by experts, neither group evidenced superiority in this regard. The only clear advantage the experienced group seemed to possess was in their questioning strategies, leading to a more active approach to learning with greater variety.
How does this apply to my topic? My population also consists of domain specialists engaged in the task of developing instructional software. Some characterizations of the population are thus transferable. My focus, however, moves back a step to the point before the novices begin development when they are just learning to use the authoring software. Still, the information in this research lays a strong foundation for description of the population.
REFERENCES
Boot, E.W., van Merrienboer, J.J.G., and Veerman, A.L. (2007). Novice and experienced instructional software developers: Effects on materials created with instructional software templates. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55, pp. 647-666. DOI 10.1007/s11423-006-9002-9
Merrill, M.D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50, pp. 51-55.
Spector, J., and Muraida, D. (1997). Automating design instruction. In S. Dijkstra, N. Seel, F. Schott, and D. Tennyson (Eds.), Instructional design: International perspectives, Vol. 2 (pp. 59-81). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Merrill, M.D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50, pp. 51-55.
Spector, J., and Muraida, D. (1997). Automating design instruction. In S. Dijkstra, N. Seel, F. Schott, and D. Tennyson (Eds.), Instructional design: International perspectives, Vol. 2 (pp. 59-81). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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