Conclusions of the forum dedicated to design-research

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Forum editions, Innovation & ICT

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Begoña Gros

Until the end of 80′s innovation in university teaching focuses on the analysis of teaching methods to be considered that innovation and change is produced from the methodological changes made to the teachers individually. Then innovation has been institutionalized and has become a finishing process for proposed changes introduce new enhancements to both micro (course) and macro (in the institution as a whole).

This innovative process always involves intent, planning and effort, but still can result in failure but has no effect on what students learn or how they learn. Therefore, research is especially relevant because it allows direct innovation processes through the knowledge generated by research.

In this sense, participatory methodological approaches (focusing on the analysis of the practices) are particularly interesting in terms of their silver research. One of them is the best known action research. This enables us to develop a participatory analysis, where the actors become the protagonists of the process of building knowledge of the facts about the object of study, the detection of problems and needs and, finally, the creation of proposals and solutions.

Thus, the design-research is based on a cyclical process in which the design is constantly reviewed and adapted to the context of the system based on learning objectives. Takes place in learning environments and real and complex in the presence of different variables that can not always be controlled or determined a priori, and research that involves not defined methodology (quantitative or qualitative) but by its object that is, essentially: to explain a change, an innovation.

In order to explain their results, the description of the types of activities loses some importance, since the intention is not to replicate the experiment, but learn from mistakes to improve the design and implemented to create a knowledge base that contributes to the success of implementation in other similar contexts.

Using this research methodology means that the researcher is willing to lose its privileged point of view and assume that participants have a role “coparticipants”.