Content area
Full Text
Our companion journal, Educational Technology Research and Development, recently published an excellent paper by Feng Wang and Michael Hannafin dealing with design-based research (2005). It presents interesting, well written, and widely applicable information about a topic many of us are not familiar with: design-based research, which is defined as:
a systematic but flexible methodology aimed to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real-world settings, and leading to contextually-sensitive design principles and theories. (p. 7)
Distance education needs designs for effective research that build on the traditional approaches to research. While...