Revisiting Educational Design Research: From an Idealistic to a Viable Research Framework for Educational Researchers

Educational Design research(EDR) is distinguished from conventional educational research in its pursuit of dual goals in producing new reusable knowledge and improving educational practice. The outcomes of EDR can lead to sustained educational improvement; however, EDR has not been widely adopted within the educational technology community. Particularly, there are perceptions that EDR is too difficult or complex for doctoral students or that it requires longer commitment than usual duration that most doctoral students use for conducting their doctoral dissertations. The purpose of this paper is to address these perceptions so that eventually there will be more and better dissertations completed by doctoral students that can be characterized as EDR, and that these studies will be done in such a way that the twin goals of solving serious problems and contributing new design principles are realized. In this paper, first, we describe in general terms what EDR looks like when it is planned, implemented, and reported by doctoral students. Then, to assist graduate students and early career scholars in engaging in EDR projects, we present an authentic EDR case study on academic integrity and plagiarism in a university context and the steps taken in that research, including lessons learned and challenges encountered. Finally, we address important measures and steps to be considered in beginning the journey of an EDR project.