Introduction
Learning Environments Design series is a collection of seminal readings with commentary on different topics of learning environments design. Students taking the EDUC/HCI-603: Advanced Learning Environments Design graduate course at Iowa State University contributed to the development of this open online source. This initiative is a product of the “open pedagogy” approach that I follow in designing the assignments and projects in my courses.
Open pedagogy relies on creating and sharing open educational resources (OER) with students. As I was exploring the integration of open pedagogy activities into my graduate courses, I came across with the Open Education Reader, a collection of readings on open education, developed by Dr. David Wiley and his graduate students. This work inspired me to implement a similar project in our instructional design course with a focus on creating a repository of synthesized seminal readings on the topic related to learning environments design.
As a requirement of their first project in the course, students synthesized and presented their notes on selected articles and shared examples as well as discussion questions that can help future readers interested in exploring these topics. For each topic, we analyzed at least three pioneer work on that field and synthesized them with the following information:
- Reference and link to the article
- Background
- Summary of key points
- Design principles
- Example work/article/case to illustrate the principle in design/practice
- Discussion questions
- Additional resources
The topics we cover in the first edition included: design thinking, multimedia learning principles, augmented reality and virtual reality, intelligent tutoring systems, flipped learning, and computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). In the second edition, we added: personal learning environments, learning analytics, motivation design, embodied cognition, cognitive load, problem based learning, blended learning, cognitive apprenticeship, mobile learning, and scaffolding.
Future students taking my instructional design courses will contribute to this collective work and help increase our coverage of the topics related to learning environments design.
I would like to thank the students and contributors of this edition. Special thanks to Dana Alzoubi in helping me design the book and Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University’s Park Library in supporting our work on open pedagogy and open educational practices.
I am excited to share this resource with the instructional design community. I hope you enjoy reading this collection. If you have recommendations for other topics and articles related to learning environments design, please share these under the comments option on the Topics/articles to consider in the next edition page.
