Designer Thinking: How Novices and Experts Think About Instructional Design

Instructional design can be characterized as a complex problem-solving task, yet little is known about what cognitive processes it requires. This research sought to identify differences in the thinking of expert and novice instructional designers given the same design task. A talk-aloud procedure was used to capture their problem-solving procedures and representations while designing instruction for a computer simulation. A coding scheme based on design principles, strategies, and subtasks was applied to the verbal protocols. Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that expert and novice instructional designers do appear to use divergent design paths. These design paths were further analyzed using design trees.