Investigating the effectiveness of "Instructional Design Thinking" on the instructional design capability of educational technology students

Educational technology, as an interdisciplinary field, is affected by the advances in science and technology and the use of their findings to facilitate the education process and improve the quality of learning. With the aim of using “Design Thinking” as a new approach for innovation and creative problem solving and a source of effect in instructional design issues, the current research is in search of design and validation of design thinking instructional model in educational technology in order to improve instructional design, create rich experiences and innovative issues in education. The lack of formation of the designer's identity in the instructional designer and the lack of equipping the mind with creative design and design thinking can lead to superficial and low-quality instructional designs, boredom and reduced motivation, and reduced effectiveness of educational plans. In this regard, paying attention to thinking designerly and design thinking can respond to the challenges facing instructional design and solve them. The basic gap in this field is the lack of effective design thinking instructional model for educational technology students, which is the aim of this research.

In conducting the research, a mixed method was used in the form of a sequential exploratory design with two main qualitative and quantitative parts. In order to identify the components of design thinking in the model of instructional design, a systematic review method was used by examining research from 1980 to 2021 in various multidisciplinary and scientific databases in Latin and Persian. 294 researches were identified and after reading the summary of articles and preliminary review and removing irrelevant articles, 21 articles were subjected to qualitative content analysis with inductive design. The components of design thinking, social constructivism, design-instructional design thinking were extracted and based on the findings of the qualitative part, the proposed model of education was designed inspired by Janasen's model and was subject to internal and external validation in the quantitative part. For the internal validation of the model, a descriptive survey method was used with the statistical community of experts in the field of educational technology. The external validation of the model was done through the quasi-experimental method (pre-test and post-test groups, experimental and reference groups) with the participation of 32 master's and doctoral students in educational technology, and the results were used to modify and finalize the model.

Inductive analysis of the content of the qualitative part of the research showed that the instructional pattern of DT is a mixture of the theoretical and practical components of DT, instructional design, and social constructivism. Identification of the components, their relationship, and their combination to conform to the pattern of the instructional design of DT resulted in the presentation of a conceptual model and a proposed pattern for instructional design. In the quantitative part of the research, the internal validity of the proposed pattern was confirmed by 29 educational technology experts and university instructors.  The descriptive results and the t-test of each of the groups regarding the variables and the mean and standard deviation of the results of covariance of the experimental and control groups after intervention showed that using the pattern, that is proposed for DT, was significant at the alpha level of p<0.01 with the score for students’ DT qualification. The null hypothesis was rejected in the confidence interval level of 99 percent and the research hypothesis was confirmed on the condition of validity of the proposed pattern for teaching DT and its impact on the instructional design performance of the MA and Ph.D. students of educational technology.

Confirmation of the research's internal and external validity testifies that the proposed pattern can be suitable for teaching DT to students of educational technology while providing a safe and flexible environment for DT learning. Furthermore, it may promote qualifications for instructional design in the areas of professional foundations, planning, and analysis, compilation, assessment, instructional evaluation, and betterment of instructional design. However, there are certain challenges in the way of enforcement and some exigencies for successful DT teaching, which need to be taken into consideration. The pattern can be used in the centers for training and recruiting instructional designers, thus contributing to better performance of the instructional design.