Application of design research methodology to a contex-sensitive study in engineering education

In this paper, we describe and analyze how design research methodology has been implemented in one research project in engineering education. In a first part, we describe the research project in engineering education, we explain why we decided to apply the design-based methodology and how we did it. In a second part, we consider the methodology itself, and in the particular context of the study. First, we analyze the interactions between the instructors, the teachers, the students, the researcher, the designer and the object of design. We argue that a theoretical framework is necessary to inform the logic of the study. Second, we discuss how design research can be used to generate instructional design methods that are sensitive to the context. Third, whereas design methodology is dealing with purposive and small scale sampling, we consider phenomenography research to be an appropriate continuation of the design research, rather than statistical generalization.