Enhancing the Worth of Instructional Technology Research through "Design Experiments" and Other Development Research Strategies

Several years ago, Professor Dave Merrill from Utah State University drew a metaphorical line in the sand that called for anyone committed to serious instructional technology research to join him and his associates in pursuing an empirical research agenda based upon the fact that instruction is a science (Merrill, Drake, Lacey, & Pratt, 1996). He also contended that instructional design is a technology derived from the science of instruction based upon principles that could be verified by empirical data.

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