| Expertise has been studied in many fields including instructional design; however, differences between novice and expert designers' use of instructional design principals was not fully researched. This study extended knowledge of instructional design expertise by examining the relationships among years of formal instructional design education, years of experience, and use of design principles through retrospective analysis of design products. A correlational study was conduct with 19 participants that designed lessons for military, business, higher education and K-12 settings. Participants submitted courses or lessons that they had designed with the past year and the products were evaluated to determine if the designer used particular design principles. Data analyzed resulted in no significant relationships between years of formal instructional design education, years of experience, and use of design principles; however, this result may be due to the small sample size. Separation of participants into novice and expert categories revealed a significant relationship between years of formal instructional design education and use of design principles in the expert designer group. Study results show that using design principles alone as a measure of instructional design expertise may not be sufficient. Therefore, future research is necessary to clarify and extend the research conducted in this study. Studies are needed that expand the examination of design principles from five principles examined in this study to more extensive lists of principles. More research is necessary that examines the products of instructional design in relation to expertise, including studies that correlate learning outcomes in relation to other measures of instructional design expertise. |
