The Design-Based Research Collective is a small group of researchers who engage in design-based research, often in technology enhanced learning environments. In our own work, we have come to recognize the need to better define the nature, methods, and outcomes of design-based research so that we may more easily share our own research and build on the work of others.

Through a series of writing institutes funded by the Spencer Foundation, we are addressing this need, drawing on our own work — together with significant voices in design-based research methods — to refine a definition of design experimentation that is broad enough to encompass a diversity of research perspectives, yet rigorous enough to sustain theoretical and methodological attacks on its robustness and cumulativity.

We do not presume to speak for the entire field. Rather, we hope that our work will contribute to an emerging discussion within the field as to the nature of design experimentation and other design-based research methods, and provide a coherent vision of design-based research that can speak to critical audiences beyond the research community.

Our efforts are centered on a series of questions that speak to the nature, methods, and results of design-based research.

Funded by The Spencer Foundation