Myhill Le and Le (1999) recognise that problems arise when applying the term user-friendly in education. For example, they note that a software package aimed at making users ‘happy and friendly’ may not be good for learning. They note this is particularly true with many computer games, which may be user-friendly but educationally ‘unfriendly’. Due to the difficulty in applying the term user-friendly in education, the researchers introduced the term ‘learner-friendly, which emphasises an educational perspective in the evaluation of computer aided learning software. It is important to reiterate that both user-friendly and learner-friendly design needs to be implemented in order to develop effective learning environments. Arguably, both terms are co-dependent upon each other. For instance, a courseware may be user-friendly (easy to use) but it may utilise an ineffective pedagogical method for the type of learning that is required (this makes it learner unfriendly). On the other hand, a courseware may be learner-friendly and utilise the appropriate pedagogical methodology, but be designed in a way that is user ‘unfriendly’. Thus, a consideration of both user-friendly and learner-friendly design is essential. Whilst user-friendly design involves a consideration of screen design and interaction features that enhance usability, learner-friendly design involves a consideration of the epistemological grounding behind the design (e.g. objectivist or constructivist), the pedagogical methodology that is used, and a consideration of how students learn (e.g. considering learning styles), so that the potential for learning is optimised.
Whilst researchers’ take it for granted that the purpose behind good courseware design is to enable learning (Jonassen, Cernusca and Ionas, 2007; Merrill and Wilson, 2007b) there is little research on students’ perspectives behind the pedagogical design of courseware. That is, do students believe that the purpose of courseware is necessarily to enable effective learning through the learning design? Or do they see courseware simply as a group of resources, which they may look at if they feel the urge? This research seeks to find out more about contemporary participants’ perspectives regarding educational philosophies in courseware, as well as their belief systems on their definition of courseware. There is a significant body of literature on both user-friendly and learner-friendly design, which learner- centered courseware encompasses, however little attention has been paid to designing, developing and evaluating learner-centered courseware. At the heart of this issue is the confusion on the definition of instructional design, both in terms of its pedagogical context and in terms of an eLearning context. When it comes to the pedagogical context of instructional design, there is disagreement on the characteristics of instructional design. Reigeluth’s (1999) chapter defining instructional design pointed out that the current paradigm of education and training was moving from one based on conformity and compliance (teacher-centered instruction), to one that was based on diversity and initiative (learner- centered) instruction. Reigeluth believed that the role of instructional design and instructional design theory was moving away from teacher-centered methodologies where the focus was on presenting the material, teacher-control, and passive learning, to learner-centered methodologies where the focus is on making sure learners’ needs are met, learner-control, and active learning processes where the student shares control and responsibility of their learning. In short, Reigeluth believed that the educational paradigm of instructional design was moving from one based on a behaviourist epistemology, to one based on a constructivist epistemology. A decade later researchers such as Gustafson and Branch (2007) affirm that instructional design is learner-centered, and that the learners and their performance are the focal points of all teaching and learning activities. They reaffirm the paradigm shift from one based on teacher-control, to one based on learner-control and oriented towards a constructivistic epistemology that focuses on goal-oriented, collaborative and meaningful learning. In contrast to this Merrill et al (1996) question the legitimacy of constructivistic approaches for instructional design, and appears to support an objectivist/behaviourist epistemology, by pointing out that instructional design should promote the ‘acquisition of knowledge and skills” through ‘scientific methods’. Stubbs and Watkins (2000) also points out that whilst constructivist learning is advocated by researchers in the contemporary literature of instructional design, there is pressure from students to adopt a more behaviourist approach which focuses on recalling lecture content for assessment. Furthermore, John Bain (2003) questions whether we should preserve some aspects of objectivism/behaviourism, by pointing out the complex relationship between teaching and learning and the need to
reconcile the importance of teaching (instruction) with ensuring students do the learning (independent learning).
As much of the literature on the pedagogical aspects of instructional design focuses on experts’ opinions, there is a strong need for more research on experts, as well as academics and students’ perspectives on the teacher-centered (behaviourist) and learner-centered (constructivist) aspects of courseware design, in order to better understand what it means for courseware be learner-friendly. It is the belief of the researcher that the development of instructional design theory in the future is strongly reliant upon reconciling what it means to be ‘learner-friendly’ in an online environment. Part of this involves designing learner-centered courseware according to the contemporary theory, and getting a range of participants to evaluate this courseware in order to better understand teachers’ and learners’ perspectives of courseware design. In order to develop a learner-centered design for courseware, it is also important to consider the usability aspects of design. Interestingly, no definition of instructional design that the researcher has come across refers to the implementation of both user-friendly as well as learner-friendly aspects of design. The virtual ‘e’ component of eLearning still appears to be missing from definitions of instructional design for eLearning. In order to reconcile these differences, this research attempts to design a courseware based on both the tents of user-friendly and learner-friendly research. This research focuses on the perspectives of a range of participants on the evaluation of a prototype courseware based on user-friendly design along with learner-centered constructivistic tenets, in order to better understand how effective the theory on courseware design, translates into practice.
It has been established above that little attention has been paid to designing, developing and evaluating learner-centered courseware in the literature, due to the disagreement on the nature of instructional design (i.e. should instructional design be based on behaviourist or constructivist epistemology and the fact that most instructional design theories tend to consider the ‘user-friendly’ aspects of courseware design (the ‘e’ of eLearning) as separate from the learner-friendly design. It should also be put forward however, that another reasons why there is only a small literature base on the design, development and evaluation of learner-centered courseware, could be because of the fact that most instructional design is undertaken in the commercial sector by designers by contract whom are untrained on instructional design theory (Richey, Morrison, and Foxon, 2007; Merrill and Wilson, 2007), and the learning design in these situations tends to take second place to the whims of administrators and clients. Because of this, there is strong need for more literature on the importance of designing for learning, in order to help convince those in control of its development of its relevance.