Presented at AERA'18.
Abstract: Instructional design as a practice and set of knowledge has long claimed to exist at a level “beyond discipline”—where the principles that designers derive from instructional theory and learning theory are in certain ways “content-agnostic.” This has led to an understanding of instructional design practice that privileges theoretical abstractions of instructional design activities over what are often thought of as “selection of a model” or “modifications to the model.” In this proposal, we rely upon a case study to illustrate these tensions and facilitate a conversation about the limitations of current ID models and practices. In the case, we describe the interactions among instructors and program designers in an experimental undergraduate transdisciplinary degree program across multiple years of course and program development, productively complicating traditional notions of ID practice as model-directed and model-driven. Through this case, we identify multiple tensions in designing across disciplines or in discipline-agnostic ways, including multiple instances where traditional ID guidance or knowledge is currently entirely lacking or insufficient. We conclude with opportunities for inculcating a more expansive notion of design in instructional design and technology to meet the growing need of designing inter/trans-disciplinary educational experiences.