Value-sensitive design in the praxis of instructional design: A view of designers in situ

Philosophical stances and design frameworks, such as value-sensitive design, manifest in design praxis through enacting specific design approaches and employing a variety of methods by the designers. Although it could overlap with other frameworks and approaches in the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) field, value-sensitive design remains a largely unexplored topic in the praxis of instructional design for several reasons. As it focuses on different stakeholders and their values, and by recognizing the contested issue of universal values, we report in this paper on our empirical work that sought to describe the values that instructional designers hold/express in relation to their instructional design work for online courses. In this study, instructional designers communicated their values while discussing their design philosophies and how they manifested in designing human-computer interactions to promote online authentic learning. Through the theoretical lens of value-sensitive design, we provide a detailed account of instructional designers' values as well as describe and showcase how their values manifested in specific design artefacts. Through this investigation of instructional designers' values, we contribute to the ongoing discussion on value-sensitive design and generate implications for instructional design research and education. These implications contribute to the evolution of the instructional design field.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Philosophical stances and design frameworks, such as value-sensitive design (VSD), manifest in design praxis through designers enacting specific design approaches and employing a variety of methods.
• VSD overlaps with other frameworks and approaches in the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) field and manifests through different terms/frameworks.
• VSD is a largely unexplored topic in the praxis of instructional design.
• Designers' philosophies, values and design judgements play a significant role in design practice, and they are the driving force behind the enactment of frameworks and philosophical stances such as VSD.
• The IDT field has not sufficiently addressed the role of the designer in carrying out design work.

What this paper adds

• Detailed accounts of instructional designers' values of care toward learners while designing human-computer interactions to support authentic learning in online learning environments.
• Specific showcase of examples of how instructional designers' values manifest in their specific designed artefacts that qualify to be value-sensitive designs.
• A contribution to the ongoing discussion on VSD in relation to designers' level of design expertise and their overall capacity to evoke strong design judgements.
• A contribution to the evolution of IDT by focusing on instructional designers themselves.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• IDT scholars need to focus more on designers' professional characters and ethical orientations—as the true guarantors of design—and less on prescriptive design models.
• Design educators need to focus their design curricula on developing designers' professional characters so that designers can be aware of their values, examine them, cultivate more values and, most importantly, develop the capacity to evoke strong and successful design judgements.
• To be able to subscribe, enact and even criticize and expand designerly frameworks such as VSD, instructional design students need to develop a design mindset early in their professional journey.
• Designers need to have the capacity to examine their own values, nurture them and, most importantly, cultivate new values to help them become the true guarantors of design.