Educational design as a quest for congruence: The need for alternative learning design tools

There is a common predicament faced by educational designers, that is, the lack of learning design tools for nontraditional pedagogies of learning. Because of this lack of alternatives, educational designers often use traditional design tools (such as task analysis) in contexts where nontraditional learning activities (such as collaborative projects) are desired. Because the learning goals of objectivist and alternative epistemologies differ, the designed instructional/learning activities do not match the original goals or desired learning outcomes. It is argued that learning design should be understood of as a quest for congruence between learning epistemologies and designs. This paper proposes an analytical framework to help identify the congruence or lack thereof of a learning design. The framework consists of: (1) the employed epistemology and desired learning outcome, (2) focus of analysis, (3) focus of design and (4) the design process. It is hoped that this framework will provide a lever for developing design tools that are more congruent with alternative pedagogies.