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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development and testing of an innovative mobile application using design-based research.

This paper reports on the process of transformation of existing printed course material into digitized content through design-based research where design, research and practice were concurrently applied through several iterations of the mobile application. For this transformation, one session each from BSc in Nursing, Bachelor of Pharmacy and Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences was selected. In the first phase of the design-based research, the main research question was formulated. In the second phase, a mobile learning application (OUSL MLearn) was designed and developed to address the research question. In the third phase, this application was evaluated by five groups of stakeholders: content experts to validate the content; educational technologists to check the alignment of technical and pedagogical features; novice users to check the overall effectiveness of the application; developer to develop the application, to check the ease of usage; and researchers to identify the impact of this innovation. These stakeholders were closely involved throughout the whole process which lasted over a period of four months. At the end of this development phase, the results were reflected upon and used for further enrichment.

It was observed that the developed mobile application was accessible, appealing and pedagogically constructive for users. However, optimization, development time, technical and organizational issues, workload of academics and production costs were identified as major challenges.

This study was based on the findings of a small sample of potential users.

The findings have implications for designing culturally adaptive interactive mobile applications.

This study will benefit practitioners to design culturally sensitive mobile learning courses and researchers to conduct design-based research.

This paper is a thinking piece that examines, from the viewpoint of a Canadian pracademic, working through two definitions of pracademic, a collaborative relationship between academics and practitioners and a person engaged as a practitioner and researcher. Two aspects of a pracademics scholarship is discussed, wide awakeness and praxis. The purpose of the paper is to make the case that it is pracademics who are well suited and attuned to questioning, challenging, and disrupting the ordinariness of the everyday, to envision new possibilities, and who take responsibility for mobilizing the educational community to undertake meaningful social change within an education system. A case is provided to illustrate wide-awakeness and praxis in practice. A case is provide to illustrate how wide-awakeness and praxis present themselves in practice.

This paper considers the work of pracademics from Galileo Educational Network, located within a research-intensive university, who research and lead design-based professional learning. Drawing upon a design-based approach to guide design-based professional learning and design-based research, I highlight the ways in which wide-awakeness and praxis work themselves out in practice.

Drawing upon the two aspects of wide-awakeness and praxis, creates a liminal space for pracademics to engage with practitioners to undertake stubborn and persistent problems of practice to create important educational improvements. A key to engaging in transformational change through collaborative professionalism is to engage in sustained design-based professional learning led by pracademics.

This thinking piece offers the perspective of one Canadian pracademic who shows how pracademics are uniquely positioned to take on the work of transformation, agency, and social change.

The purpose of this paper is to adapt the design-based learning (DBL) approach for entrepreneurship education. Having in mind the aim to improve the innovative thinking competence of nascent entrepreneurs that operate at the fuzzy front end of innovation, the research identifies key characteristics of the co-design-based learning (Co-DBL) approach for nurturing entrepreneurs in the digital age.

The exploratory research is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis. To get feedback and to evaluate the progress of innovative thinking competence of Co-DBL participants, the pre- and post-co-design workshop surveys were administrated. The statistical analysis of the surveys was carried out to determine the effects of the Co-DBL.

The research has revealed key dimensions relevant to Co-DBL in entrepreneurial learning (features of the project, facilities for project activities, features of the teaching process, features of learning context and assessment) and found the corresponding characteristics. The results of the current study show the perspective of the suggested Co-DBL approach in entrepreneurial learning to improve creativity, analyticity, intuition and flexibility of thinking of nascent entrepreneurs.

This paper presents a new look at co-design that can be applied to entrepreneurship education to enhance innovative thinking, improve the ability of nascent entrepreneurs to identify and create opportunity and to tolerate ambiguity and conditions of uncertainty in the search and development of innovative solutions.

This chapter critically examines the implications of different pedagogical perspectives, approaches, and strategies for the design and implementation of technology-enhanced learning. The key tenets of different pedagogical perspectives are unpacked, including behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, socio-constructivism, and connectivism, with reference to how technology can be used to instantiate them. A range of different pedagogical approaches, including collaborative learning, problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, constructionist learning, design-based learning, and games-based learning are discussed in relation to the use of technology and the previously identified pedagogical perspectives. Pedagogical strategies at a more instantaneous level are also considered, as are the goals of technology-enhanced learning in terms of promoting authentic and meaningful learning. The critical role of the teacher when applying pedagogies using technology, as well as associated issues, are discussed throughout.

This chapter aims to establish a positive vision for the technology-enhanced learning design field. It commences by summarizing the current state of technology-enhanced learning research, as established by the previous analysis, in order to clarify the foundations upon which the field can build. The future of learning technology is considered, in the first instance, by extrapolating trends in information and communication technologies throughout history. This process showcases how the most impactful technologies are those that bring information closer to us, support sharing, and offer more visceral learning experiences. The nature of learning technology trends occurring in recent Horizon Reports, for instance, gesture-based computing, augmented reality, Massive Open Online Courses, and table computing, are analyzed and explained in terms of Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Gartner’s Hype Cycle. This leads to identifying teachers as the critical lynch pin in order for society to derive greatest educational benefit from the exponential advances in technology. Consequently, support for educators is argued as essential. Into the future the learning technology field will only optimize its progress if educators and researchers work together to understand design issues and possibilities. Directions forward for educators and researchers are proposed, emphasizing a research-driven, pedagogically focused, creative, and collaborative approach to technology-enhanced learning design.

This paper explores how learning processes supported by intensive use of design can favour absorptive capacity in open innovation contexts characterised by the interaction of a high number of diverse stakeholders.

The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidence gathered by adopting a case study approach.

Findings provide evidence about the role of design-based learning to facilitate intra- and inter-organisational knowledge flows and to sustain absorptive capacity through processes of recognition, internalisation and adoption.

The study integrates currently distinct research streams focussing on (1) design research, particularly on how design can support knowledge processes and specific learning processes and (2) open innovation, particularly regarding how to enhance absorptive capacity in those contexts in which a high number of diverse stakeholders interact.

This study can help companies, research institutions and other organisations leveraging open innovation to reflect on the potential of design-based learning processes and on how to deliberately facilitate such processes in their projects.

The original contribution provided by this study is to explore open innovation through some analytical categories elaborated in design research concerning materially grounded forms of design-based learning. In particular, the study investigates how design supports knowledge transfer, sharing, translation and creation.

Design-based research (DBR) involves multiple iterations, and innovations are needed in analytical methods for understanding how learners experience a learning experience in ways that both embrace the complexity of learning and allow for data-driven changes to the design of the learning experience between iterations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method of crafting design moves in DBR using network analysis.

This paper introduces learning experience network analysis (LENA) to allow researchers to investigate the multiple interdependencies between aspects of learner experiences, and to craft design moves that leverage the relationships between struggles, what worked and experiences aligned with principles from theory.

The use of network analysis is a promising method of crafting data-driven design changes between iterations in DBR. The LENA process developed by the authors may serve as inspiration for other researchers to develop even more powerful methodological innovations.

LENA may provide design-based researchers with a new approach to analyzing learner experiences and crafting data-driven design moves in a way that honors the complexity of learning.

LENA may provide novice design-based researchers with a structured and easy-to-use method of crafting design moves informed by patterns emergent in the data.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose a method for using network analysis of qualitative learning experience data for DBR.

In this study, reasons for proving the relevancy of personalisation of e-learning systems to act as a knowledge management system in which tacit to tacit type of knowledge (socialisation) can be delivered, are being provided. Nonaka’s knowledge conversion model is being used as the basis of the investigation. The relationship between ‘the strategic knowledge conversion model’ drawn from the ‘identifying list of strategies’ and ‘an individual’s decision-making method’ has been investigated in relation to knowledge transferring systems and individual’s learning styles. The outcome of the qualitative as well as quantitative investigation defines a set of frameworks in which different types of e-learning systems utilizing different learning philosophies and learners learning preferences to support the learner’s learning curve.

Introducing technology at work presents a special challenge as learning is tightly integrated with workplace practices. Current design-based research (DBR) methods are focused on formal learning context and often questioned for a lack of yielding traceable research insights. This paper aims to propose a method that extends DBR by understanding tools as sociocultural artefacts, co-designing affordances and systematically studying their adoption in practice.

The iterative practice-centred method allows the co-design of cognitive tools in DBR, makes assumptions and design decisions traceable and builds convergent evidence by consistently analysing how affordances are appropriated. This is demonstrated in the context of health-care professionals’ informal learning, and how they make sense of their experiences. The authors report an 18-month DBR case study of using various prototypes and testing the designs with practitioners through various data collection means.

By considering the cognitive level in the analysis of appropriation, the authors came to an understanding of how professionals cope with pressure in the health-care domain (domain insight); a prototype with concrete design decisions (design insight); and an understanding of how memory and sensemaking processes interact when cognitive tools are used to elaborate representations of informal learning needs (theory insight).

The method is validated in one long-term and in-depth case study. While this was necessary to gain an understanding of stakeholder concerns, build trust and apply methods over several iterations, it also potentially limits this.

Besides generating traceable research insights, the proposed DBR method allows to design technology-enhanced learning support for working domains and practices. The method is applicable in other domains and in formal learning.

A critical attribute of open educational practices (OEP) is the pursuit of open scholarship which comprises the release of educational resources under an open licence scheme that permits no-cost access, use, reuse, adaptation, retention and redistribution to others. The degree of openness in relation to this attribute will depend on the context and culture of the place and the people in it. When left to chance, the adoption and practice of open scholarship by educators is at best sketchy. For optimum impact, a design-based approach is essential. A central focus of such an approach will need to target educators’ belief systems and practices about their scholarship. Any such work will involve researchers collaborating with practitioners in real-life settings to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to report on how the development and use of such a design-based approach, implemented by the Open University of Sri Lanka, impacted the adoption and uptake of open scholarship among teachers in the Sri Lankan school system in terms of changes in their use of instructional resources, pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices.

The study adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (Reeves, 2006), which involved researchers collaboratively working with practitioners in real-life settings to improve their educational practices along three aspects – instructional resource use, pedagogical perspectives and pedagogical practices. Based on the four stages of the DBR approach – analysis, solution, testing and refinement, and reflection, a professional development intervention programme was designed and implemented to support teachers on the integration of open educational resources (OER) and adoption of OEP in their teaching-learning process. Data collected throughout the process using multiple strategies such as questionnaire surveys, concept mapping, lesson plans, focus group interviews, self-reflections and “stories”, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

By the end of the intervention, significant changes were observed in teachers’ use of instructional resources, their pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices. While resource usage has shifted from no or low usage of OER to reuse, revise, remix and creation of OER, the pedagogical thinking and practices of teachers moved from a content-centric and individualized patterns to more constructivist, context centric and collaborative ways. The diffusion of OEP was prominent along two dimensions – enhancements in the individual practices in innovative OER use as well as collaborative practices of sharing of resources, knowledge and good practices.

The systematic and flexible methodology adopted based on the DBR approach via a framework designed as a contextualized, process oriented and a self-reflective enquiry has been very useful to support changes in OEP among practitioners over time.

This iterative process allowed the researchers to function as “designers”, while investigating real-life issues in collaboration with the practitioners through reflective enquiry to further refine innovative practices towards OEP. This provides valuable insights for improved design solutions for future interventions in similar contexts.