| During the past several decades, the field of instructional design theory has experienced changes in what is mostly applied to traditional, on-ground education. While instructional design theory has been (and still is being) discussed, constructed, and deconstructed, there has been no agreement among prominent instructional design theory researchers concerning knowledge base, terminology, or application. These aspects of instructional design theory have yet to be defined clearly and agreed upon by leading researchers for distance education at any level of schooling. Online higher education, specifically at the graduate level, has seen little or no application of instructional design theory as student enrollment grows and online courses expand in number and academic area. This study attempted to achieve consensus among a group of experienced practitioners on the potential need for instructional design theory application in online graduate education. The study used a three-round Modified Delphi Method and a panel of instructional design experienced practitioners ---among them designers, instructors and administrators--- that were asked to comment on the research questions and subsequently analyze panel responses in light of her/his own answers. After the third round of the Modified Delphi Method, data are presented in the form of descriptive statistics and interquartile ranges, which are common to the Modified Delphi Method.;The data revealed that there is continued disagreement and lack of consensus on the use or even necessity of instructional design theory in online graduate education. Distinct disagreement became evident throughout Rounds Two and Three of the study and, even among a group of experienced practitioners and thus, findings of other instructional design theory researchers were confirmed: there is no agreement on the need or implementation of instructional design theory in online education, here specifically, online graduate education. Instructional design researchers' findings, as well as the findings in this study, reveal that the past three decades of instructional design theory research have not brought these experienced practitioners any closer to standardizing, understanding or applying instructional design theory in online graduate education. |
