Inside the Black Box: Making Design Decisions for Instruction.

The literature on instructional design argues that curricula, educational materials, and instructional strategies are best created using a ‘systems approach’. Models for the systematic design of educational programmes have proliferated over the past decade. But these models are prescriptive and not based on research into how designers actually think when they approach a design task. Important theoretical and empirical studies from the fields of art, architecture, and artificial intelligence are summarized here as a prelude to presentation of findings from a study of design activities among a group of 26 novice instructional designers. Among other things, the study investigated: (1) the prevalence of initial generation of more than one possible design solution; (2) the basis on which candidate solutions were accepted or rejected; (3) the constraints encountered in proceeding with the design; and (4) the way in which designers knew that they were finished with the design. Results indicate that novice designers have difficulty entertaining multiple possible solutions, especially for more than a few steps into design work; that alternatives are eliminated very rapidly; that designers are not. proficient in representing design problems to themselves or to others; and that they have trouble saying what a reasonable stopping point is. Suggestions for further research, and for contributions that instructional design might make to the ongoing research effort on human problem-solving, are presented.