This developmental study explores the process and outcomes of creating an active learning classroom within a higher education setting. To support student success, institutions have increasingly redesigned their learning spaces to promote active learning. Early initiatives often aimed to facilitate collaborative learning and reduce reliance on…

This article reviews the origins and use of the terms quasi-experiment and natural experiment. It demonstrates how the terms conflate whether variation in the independent variable of interest falls short of random with whether researchers find, rather than intervene to create, that variation. Using the lens of assignment--the process driving…

Historically, classrooms have utilized stationary furniture, facing front toward a centralized instructor position, and limiting student-to-student interactions. Such classrooms often stem from design processes that tend to focus on building codes and feedback from investors, architects, and planners, which leaves little input from instructors and…

Architectural design representations comprise physical (models, drawings) and digital media (3D models). Multimodal combinations of physical and digital representations are commonplace in professional contexts such as design reviews or building sites, and 'making sense' of these assemblies requires complex socio-cognitive processes and…

Until now, the conventional approach using two distinct groups, experimental and control, continues to dominate research, especially education research. Researchers, particularly those who are active in this domain, readily recognise this pattern when surveying literature. This article explores the use of the Solomon four-group design as a…

Scholarly efforts to identify core design features for effective teacher professional development have grown rapidly in the last 25 years. Many concise lists of design principles have emerged, most of which converge on a consensus of 5-7 presumably 'effective' features (e.g. collaborative tasks, active learning, focus on content). The…

As higher education institutions increasingly expand their online course offerings, the role of instructional designers in enhancing instructional quality and effectiveness becomes critical. This study surveyed practicing instructional designers to explore the specific tasks they perform performed in higher education and identifies factors that…

Engineering design that requires mathematical analysis, scientific understanding, and technology is critical for preparing students for solving engineering problems. In simulated design environments, students are expected to learn about science and engineering through their design. However, there is a lack of understanding concerning linking…

Curriculum development is critically important to the educational enterprise, yet we lack insight into if and how ideal design and development practices are enacted in organizations that create curricular programs and resources intended for large-scale implementation. This study identified essential elements of curriculum development practices…

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced smart education in the artificial general intelligence era. A promising application lies in the automatic generalization of instructional design for curriculum and learning activities, focusing on two key aspects: 1) customized generation: generating niche-targeted teaching content based on…

The architectural design process is a unique process that has its inherent phases with specific activities within. Exploring and identifying the real design process which occurs within the conventional design studio is the key focus of this study. This study was carried out by adopting systematic literature review methodology. The most relevant…

In this design case, we describe our design process that resulted in recommendations for a four-year undergraduate curriculum in transdisciplinary studies. The case is centered on a fast-paced, two-week design "sprint" undertaken by the two authors, which involved consolidating and synthesizing program evaluation data and course designs…

This dissertation project began with the development of a Design-Focused Approach (DFA) to First-Year Composition (FYC) curriculum largely informed by multimodal pedagogical theory. In the DFA to FYC curriculum, I highlighted the importance of multiliteracy and the demand for multiple modalities for students to effectively communicate in various…

Makerspaces, especially in their diverse proliferating forms, support a broad variety of learning outcomes. There is rich work in attempting to understand and describe these learning goals. Yet, there is a lack of support for practitioners and educators to assess the learning in events and programming at makerspaces (and similar environments)…

Medical education may lack experiential training on authentic community engagement (CE). Employing a human-centered design approach with medical faculty and students to identify goals, opportunities, needs, and barriers to implementing CE research, we developed an Experiential Community Engagement Learning Series (EXCELS) pilot program. EXCELS…