ISDDE Conference 2008

Linking design research to professional educational design

The special theme of this conference was the relation between design and research.

Building knowledge and designing materials go hand in hand. There is, however, a gap to bridge between design researchers who are working and designing in an academic environment and professional designers who design the majority of generally used educational materials and tools. Narrowing that gap was the goal of the conference.

To this end the conference aimed to:

1. obtain an overview of the field
2. work on an infrastructure through which we can bridge research and professional design,
3. investigate ways to take the first steps to more research-based educational design.

The conference was structured around topic group discussions, demo sessions and
plenaries, given by:

Alan Schoenfeld, Paul Black, Koeno Gravemeijer and Jan de Lange.

Topic Groups  As usual in these conferences, much of the time was spent in working groups, each focussed on a specific area of design, namely:

• curriculum design
• professional development
• assessment design
• educational software

In the topic group sessions the emphasis was on discussion and exchange of knowledge, not on presentations.  The papers had been circulated in advance: these are available in the members' area of this site. Contact Daniel.Pead@Nottingham.ac.uk if you need the password.

Updated 30 Sept 2008