Who’s designing what for whom? Comparing taxonomies in web-based educational design galleries

Tim Lever
Flexible Online Learning Team
University of Sydney

Web-based galleries of educational design examples are a display space for educational innovation and a construction space for the educational identities involved in the growing educational innovation business. Taxonomies of seven web-based educational collections are compared and analysed in terms of how identities are constructed for the educational design model range, the teacher audience and educational design practice. The design collections struggle to form a coherent structural frame around their field of common interest not because they lack structures to build upon but through failure to deal with existing structures, starting with the common interest itself, shared by all without being clearly articulated by any. Other structural blind spots are apparent in the lack of representation for learning in workplace and community settings and in a failure to clearly distinguish the perspective of design user from that of design producer. A sharper focus on the user context in educational design classification would be helpful not only in improving the structure and usability of future educational design collections but also in facilitating communication generally between users and producers of educational design.

Keywords: educational design, instructional design, learning design, repositories, re‑usability, dissemination of innovation, e-learning