Extracting Guidelines and Criteria for Designing and Producing Educational Tools and Materialsin Learning

Introduction and problem statement :

One of the main issues of any educational system by educators is to make learning meaningful for learners and their academic achievement. Because meaningless learning is not particularly attractive to learners and will be forgotten. This is doubly important when learners want to apply what they have learned in real life [Khaghanizadeh and Shokrollahi, 2010]. The use of educational tools and materials that have a facilitating role in the process of teaching and learning, reduces the high cognitive burden and increases motivation in learners and enriches their learning [Dehghanzadeh et al., 2016]. In addition, it reduces learners' anxiety in learning [Kutlutürkan, 2010]. The presence of teaching materials and necessary facilities will greatly help the teaching process. Educational materials are tools and objects that help learners to better and more understand the subject of education [Sharma et al., 2015]. There are other studies that have pointed to the positive impact of educational tools and materials on the learning process. These studies include Dehghanzadeh et al (2016), Dehghanzadeh et al (2021), Zarei zavaraki and Gharibi (2013), Azizinejad and Allahkarami (2019), Khodayari (2019), Karimi shalton (2020), Madadi (2020) and Christopoulos et al (2020), and Mendoza (2018). However, various studies have focused on achieving better quality educational tools and materials in the learning process, such as the research of Kirschner et al (2006) and Jang (2010) that the existence of defects in the efficiency of educational materials and the incompatibility of these tools with up-to-date subjects in technology and education have been cited as reasons for their inefficiency. There are other researches that have directly focused on how to increase the efficiency of educational tools and equipment, which is related to the quality of their design. [Dehghanzadeh and Dehghanzadeh, 2018]. Selecting propriate educational material is a key of meaningful learning (Mukundan et al, 2011). This research has been done qualitatively using the methods of grounded theory and deductive and inductive content analysis. In this way, first in the form of grounded theory, teaching and learning propositions are extracted from each of the key concepts and ideas in the field of educational technology, then in the deductive process, guidelines are extracted from the propositions and finally by conducting an inductive study, design criteria and the production of educational tools and materials is extracted. In this study, participants were in fact different sources and documents that were analyzed. In order to select these sources, reference books related to the field were reviewed and among them the encyclopedia of technology and educational communication terminology, which was compiled with the support of the Technology and Educational Communication Association, the most well-known international association in the field of technology and instructional design has been selected. In order to collect data to answer the first question of the research, after studying the sources and consulting with experts in the field, key concepts and ideas were selected. Then, for each of the key concepts and ideas, definitions and explanations were extracted from different sources. In order to answer the first question of the research, the propositions obtained from the analysis of the data related to the first question were considered as data for extracting guidelines and the extracted guidelines in order to answer the second question of the research. The first research question was what guidelines for the production of teaching / learning materials and tools can be deduced from each of the propositions of instructional design? For example, table 1 provides some guidelines for the design and production of educational tools in the field of educational design. These guidelines are derived from the propositions of the first research question. Guidelines for designing and producing educational tools in the field of educational design are shown below: Approach: Systematic instructional design The second research question was what criteria can be inferred for the production of teaching / learning materials and tools from the extracted guidelines? In order to answer this research question, the guidelines extracted in the previous step are summarized and presented below: Criteria: Training tools and materials should include instructions for use, pedagogical standards and examples of the use of tools in order to use them effectively in education. We extracted 23 criteria for designing educational materials in the process of learning for learning different subjects. The main purpose of this study was to answer the basic question that according to the field of instructional design, what guidelines and criteria can be provided for the design, production and use of educational tools and materials? The research findings were extracted based on the source used in this study, including 68 educational propositions and 23 criteria. These findings have used two basic approaches in instructional design; Systemic approach and constructivist approach. Some research findings on propositions based on a systemic approach include: Learner analysis, feedback, various exercises, evaluation, analysis of learning topics, use of attention, presentation of learning perspective, determination of learners' input behavior, and various example. Some of the propositions extracted from the constructivist approach are: learning situationally, learning sociality, learning process, providing multiple perspectives on learning, evaluation as a tool for self-assessment, learning goals and providing opportunities for learners to reflect.