On-going Research Projects, Programs and Goals

I am spending more time on writing my textbook, Instructional Design for Teachers. I have a signed contract with the Carolina Academic Press. The book incorporates my ongoing research as well as my many years of experiences in working with pre-service and in-service teachers. The text intends to introduce principles of instructional systems design to novice teachers and help them design their instruction using a systemic and systematic planning model. The focal point of the book is proposing an instructional design model for teachers, which takes teacher thinking and teacher cognition research into account (the first book to bring the two different but related fields of research together). I have been researching, writing, and accumulating materials for this textbook since 1995. The text will have twelve chapters and will be accompanied by a student workbook, which includes specific guidelines for designing a course, a unit of instruction, and a lesson combined with many examples from practicing teachers. While completing this complex manuscript has been a challenge, given my teaching and administrative responsibilities, I plan to finish the text and its supplementary materials by the end of Spring 2006 (see Binder # 2).

I am in the final stage of revising an invited manuscript for Educational Technology Journal (a premier journal in my discipline). The paper focuses on the applications of results of a research I have conducted with two of my colleagues using handheld computers for assessment of learning and instruction. I am using that data as well as the action model that we developed for the study to propose the applications for practitioners in the field of instructional technology.

My research interest in instructional design models and principles for online learning environments has led me into a new area of research in applying learning and thinking styles theories in the design and development of online courses. I have conducted extensive literature reviews and developed a design model during the last academic year, and I am in the process of formatively evaluating the design specifications this year with one of my courses. I have published one paper in this area and am preparing another article as soon as I complete analysis of the data at end of this semester.

As an instructional designer, I became increasingly aware of the need for an assessment system that responds to students’ cognitive differences as well as the new collaborative (problem-based learning) and cooperative learning in interactive technology environments. Therefore, I have developed an assessment system that is more appropriate for such an environment. I have written a book chapter and am finalizing an article that provides the evaluation results of this assessment system in online learning environments.