Jason K McDonald

July 12, 2025July 12, 2025

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Reference:

McDonald, J. K. (2025). Course designers at work: A critical case study of optimization in online course design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 73(5), 3315-3339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-025-10525-7

Is education better because of us? How ed tech can answer the call to produce research that matters

This is the second paper I contributed to for the special issue of The Journal of Computing in Higher Education on improving educational technology research. This is a more personal paper to me than the other, though I’m proud of them both. This one explores what it would look like if we didn’t treat research as an instrumental endeavor. What if we entangled ourselves with the lives of those we study? Quite a different picture of research emerges.

Abstract

Despite the enormous investment in educational technology research, there are sincere questions about whether it is having a meaningful effect on issues that really matter. Put simply, is education better because of us? In this paper we argue that our field is not having the impact it could, due largely to our instrumentalist approach to ed tech research. Instrumentalism transforms the educational problems we study into little more than opportunities to efficiently deploy technologies and other resources that are presumed to optimize educational systems. But despite instrumentalism’s near-ubiquity, there is an alternative. By analyzing a case study of research characterized by researcher immersion and entanglement with the situation under study, we show how educational technology can resist the instrumentalist tendencies that reduce even the most serious problem into simply another resource to be optimized. In large part this occurs as we adopt practices that demand that we change ourselves—striving on our parts for more sensitivity, more understanding, more caring—so we are up to the task helping education become more just, more humane, and more focused on students’ existential development.

At Academica.edu

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I was also interviewed for an episode of the Two Pint PLC about the article. Check out the episode, as well as the whole show!

Reference:

McDonald, J. K., & Ventura, B. (2025). Is education better because of us? How ed tech can answer the call to produce research that matters. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 37(2), 543-560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-025-09440-w

July 12, 2025

The research we don’t need will persist until we dismantle the systems that sustain it

This is one of two articles I contributed towards for a special issue of The Journal of Computing in Higher Education. The issue was a call to improve research quality in the field of educational technology, something I care a lot about. Ed tech, online learning, instructional design research all had this reductive quality. It misses the mark more than it hits. It has the appearance of rigor while somehow failing to capture the substance. This article was a manifesto, led by Matt Schmidt and written along with us by Stephanie Moore, arguing that…. well… I think in this case the title speaks for itself.

Abstract

The educational technology field is at a critical juncture, facing the dual pressures of rapid technological advancement and a pressing need for research that genuinely addresses educational challenges. Despite increasing awareness of these issues, a significant amount of educational technology research remains entrenched in superficial or trend-driven inquiries, failing to tackle deeper, systemic issues. This paper critically examines the historical and institutional forces sustaining what we term “the research we don’t need,” and argues for a transformative shift toward “the research we need.” Such research must prioritize depth, long-term impact, and relevance over mere novelty or ease of publication. We outline how entrenched practices, including academic publishing standards, tenure and promotion metrics, and funding structures, contribute to a cycle that rewards superficial research. To disrupt this cycle, we propose actionable strategies to foster a research ecosystem that values substantive contributions and advocates for systemic change. Ultimately, we urge scholars, institutions, and professional organizations to embrace a collective responsibility to redefine research priorities holistically. By doing so, we can foster a field that meaningfully impacts educators, learners, and society. This is not merely a call for incremental improvements; it is a challenge to realign the field’s fundamental purpose toward more impactful, responsible, and enduring scholarship.

At Academica.edu

November 3, 2024July 12, 2025

Full-text link

Reference:

Schmidt, M., McDonald, J. K., & Moore, S. (2025). The research we don’t need will persist until we dismantle the systems that sustain it. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 37(2), 507-542. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-025-09446-4

Designing for Relational Ethics in Online and Blended Learning: Levinas, Buber, and Teaching Interfaith Ethics

I was invited by a couple of colleagues from BYU’s College of Religious Education to work with them on this paper. They were designing the online and blended course referred to throughout the article, that they were intentionally trying to model on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber. They were doing some exciting things. My part of the project was to provide discussion of from my field’s literature and draw out some theoretical implications of the practical work they were engaging in. I think it’s a nice piece with some thoughtful conclusions.

Abstract:

Online and blended learning (OBL) overemphasize the process of creating artifacts, producing strategies, or otherwise utilizing a “making” orientation in education. As an alternative to this making-orientation, we offer a model for relational course design founded in the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber. We examine an OBL course design focused on interfaith leadership and ethics that lends itself to the need for relational pedagogy. The focus on asymmetrical and symmetrical relationships that separate Levinas and Buber’s philosophies enable rich ways of designing relational pedagogies and for resisting the making orientation. By focusing on human relationships, we demonstrate design principles through “philosophies of difference” that can be used in OBL.

July 27, 2024August 11, 2025

Reference:

MacKay, M. H., McDonald, J. K., & Reed, A. C. (2025). Designing for relational ethics in online and blended learning: Levinas, Buber, and teaching interfaith ethics. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 44(1), 85-107. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-024-09971-2

A critique of calculation and optionalization applied to online/blended course design

I’m really happy with the way this article turned out. I’ve never been a huge fan of this field’s reductive tendencies. But over the past couple of years I’ve become more convinced that the common ways we practice educational technology, both through the technologies we use and the processes we use to develop or implement them, are highly problematic. Their problems run deep, and so I’ve also had to study some pretty difficult philosophical issues to try and get to the root of them. This paper is the first time I think I’ve articulated in a philosophically defensible way both my critique and empirical evidence for it. The themes I raise here are becoming more important to my work, and it’s unlikely I’ll go back to some of the other, softer critiques I’ve made in the past.

Abstract:

This article reports research into calculative and optionalized forms of online/blended course design in higher education. This was investigated through a critical case study, centered on two faculty members and one instructional designer at a university in the United States, and using an interpretive framework that highlighted the effects of calculation and optionalization in education. The course design practices at the designer’s disposal tended to distort the teaching ideals towards which the faculty members aimed, along with many of the teaching approaches they relied on to achieve their goals. The faculty often felt restricted in their ability to form rela- tionships with their students, while also observing that students tended to resist their attempts to engage in what they referred to as formational activities. Through these and other experiential tensions, the faculty left the project with a pervasive sense of ambiguity about course design and its contribution towards their experience as educators. The article concludes by exploring what implications these findings have for the study and practice of online/blended course design in higher education.

July 27, 2024August 1, 2024

Read online link

Reference:

McDonald, J. K., & Costa, I. M. (2025). A critique of calculation and optionalization applied to online/blended course design. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 37(3), 865-897. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-024-09409-1

The NACI way: Connecting native groups and teachers through culturally responsive instructional design

This was another student led project by Stephanie West, based on her Masters work at BYU. She led a team of researchers and others to design a training course for Utah teachers on how to better teach the histories and culture of indigenous tribes. As with other student projects, I largely rode her coattails on this one, but I’m pleased to have been part of it even a little.

Abstract:

In 2018, the BYU ARTS Partnership Native American Curriculum Initiative (NACI) was developed in response to teacher questions regarding the teaching of Native topics. Despite increased movements towards reconciliation,
Native groups continue to be marginalized in Westernized educational settings. Additionally, teachers lack clear guidelines regarding the respectful teaching of Native topics. Describing the challenges we, the NACI team members, faced in our six-year journey partnering with Native groups in Utah, we outline key instructional design decisions we made and identify the culturally responsive principles that guided those decisions. We also advocate for the application of culturally responsive principles and practices in education including the amplification of Native voices in the classroom.

July 27, 2024August 11, 2025

Reference:

West, S., Francis, H., Flox, C., Beyal, B., Soderborg, E., & McDonald, J. K. (2024). The NACI way: Connecting native groups and teachers through culturally responsive instructional design. International Journal of Designs for Learning. 15(2), 26-40. https://doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v15i2.36081

Speculative practicescapes of learning design and dreaming

This was a unique, and fun, paper to work on. My colleague Eamon Costello from Dublin City University (who I’ve been doing a lot of ethnographic work with this year) wrote up a sort of manifesto of various practicescapes (or speculative views of the landscapes in which practice happens) associated with learning design. He then asked various people, including myself, to respond to the issues he raised in an equally poetic and speculative spirit. My contribution was short, but allowed me to articulate some issues that had been weighing on me for some time.

Abstract:

This article addresses a serious issue that besets learning design: its over-reliance on frameworks that promise particular outcomes for individual learners that accord with pre-defined metrics. This is partly a function of the nature of learning design and devel- opment itself which is commonly seen as outcome-oriented activity that should ben- efit individual learners in specific ways. An alternative approach is adopted here which calls attention to other happenings at the heart of education, including positive emo- tions we experience that are made known through less measurable and more fleeting points of reference. Hence, we draw on sources such as poems and personal reflections in order not just to design learning but to dream it. The concept of a practicescape is invoked which serves not just to situate learning but to remind the learner that their learning experience only happens within the context of their finite lifetime. Seven prac- ticescapes are presented and reflected on by the authors as a conversation framework for interrogating ideas of learning that owe more to dreams, poems, and possibilities than aims, objectives, or outcomes. Drawing on early Buddhist philosophy, the prac- ticescapes attempt to honour particular affective states and conjure a heart-centred framework on which to hang speculative questions and provocations for learning design that are focused on cultivating and sustaining the most positive forms of human experi- ence. These practicescapes are offered as a speculative learning design climbing frame that could take us from dreams of possibility to enlivened and embodied presents.

July 27, 2024August 1, 2024

Reference:

Costello, E., McDonald, J. K., Macgilchrist, F., Jandrić, P., Carbonel, H., Crighton, S., Buch, A., & Peters, M. A. (2025). Speculative practicescapes of learning design and dreaming. Postdigital Science and Education, 7(2), 560-588. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00465-5

Cassie Standage: Developing a workplace violence prevention training

This was a fun chapter led by a former student, Amy Rogers. It’s a case study of instructional design practice for a textbook of ID cases. Amy did a great job scoping the case, creating artifacts, writing it up, and so on. I largely rode her coattails.

Introduction:

Cassie Standage is a recent graduate starting her first remote job as an instructional designer. She is asked to assist with a high-stakes, time-sensitive project developing a workplace violence prevention training program for 9,000 firefighters. The case begins with her receiving the workplace violence prevention assignment and concludes after she completes her informal learner analysis. Critical to this case is the fact that Cassie’s team needs to identify strategies that will help them be successful with this unique group of learners. While some of the resources/strategies that existed for the ID team are discussed in the case, students will be able to brainstorm other possible avenues for understanding an audience and building the trust and buy-in of their learners and SMEs.

April 8, 2024May 15, 2024

Reference:

Rogers, A., & McDonald, J. K. (2024). Cassie Standage: Developing a workplace violence prevention training. In P. A. Ertmer, K. D. Glazewski, A. A. Koehler, & J. E. Stefaniak (Eds.), The ID casebook: Case studies in instructional design(6^th ed., pp. 307-318). Routledge.

Using theory as a learning and instructional design professional

A few years ago, I developed what I called the Phronetic Framework for Using LDT Theory. It was published in a book of theories for guiding the future of the field. I’m happy with the chapter and the underlying framework, but have always thought it was a little advanced. So, I simplified the chapter for my Design for Learning textbook, and hopefully now its more useful to students or others trying to think through issues of theory in the field.

Chapter Introduction:

Practitioners in the field of learning and instructional design are commonly told that “theories are the foundation for designing instructional solutions to achieve desired learning outcomes” (Oyarzun & Conklin, 2021). But if this is true, why do designers often report that theory is “too abstract and inapplicable” to address common problems of practice (Yanchar et al., 2010, p. 50)? Or, alternatively, that theories are so “rigid” (p. 51) and prescriptive that they lead to one-size-fits-all solutions that do not fit the circumstances in which designers are working?

In my studies, I have come to believe that part of the problem is that designers think about theory the wrong way. They often assume it is like a tool (a power drill, for instance, or a circular saw). In this view, theory has some kind of capacity built into it that is independent of the person using it. Anyone can pick it up and produce results (if they have received the proper training, of course). But this perspective misunderstands something fundamental about human-centered work like learning and instructional design. Theories do not solve problems. People do. This does not mean theory is useless. It just means it plays a different role in designers’ work than being a tool that they apply. So, if designers want theory to be applicable and usable they need to first put it into its proper place—a place that recognizes that they—the designers—are most central to the work of improving education, and not a set of abstract, theoretical ideas that are presumed to have the power to solve problems. From this perspective, theory becomes one of many supports for practice, but not the most important nor the most decisive.

My purpose in this chapter is to explain these issues. First, I review some of the challenges with the field’s traditional views of theory. Next, I offer a different view of theory that conceptualizes it as a support that helps designers strengthen their own capacities for better judgement. Finally, I briefly describe different kinds of theory that apply to learning and instructional design practice, and how they support designers’ judgement in differing ways.

February 21, 2024March 1, 2024

At the book website

Reference:

McDonald, J. K. (2024). Using theory as a learning and instructional design professional. In J. K. McDonald, & R. E. West (Eds.), Design for learning: Principles, processes, and praxis. EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/id/future_views_of_theory_in_learning_and_instructional_design

Understanding trust in online course design

This is the third article coming out of my ethnography project that studied online course design. It follows up from my study of everydayness, and my study of autonomy and collaboration in course design. What’s unique about this paper is we discovered how many different ways that the concept of trust is used by course designers. Sometimes, they’re telling people to back off and trust them–let them do their jobs. Sometimes, they’re referring to how much they trust others, in a sense recognizing they can’t do the job alone so need the help of qualified collaborators. There are other meanings of trust in course design, too (read the paper!). Among other findings, I think this paper complicates the way lots of other researchers talk about trust. They discuss it as if it were a self-evident good, and never really acknowledge that some of the ways that designers talk about trust are in tension with each other (I trust you vs. back off and just trust me). I wish we acknowledged that more in our discourse.

Abstract:

This study reports research on instructional designers’ experiences of trust in the context of online course design in a university setting. Through semi-structured interviews with designers, we explored how trust showed up as a meaningful phenomenon in their experience and how they went about increasing trust in their relationships with faculty members. Our analysis of interviews suggested two major themes related to how trust fit into designers’ working experiences. First, designers experienced at least three different forms of trust: (1) self-trust; (2) trust in faculty; and (3) organizational trust. Second, designers pursued at least two strategies to nurture trust in design work: (1) cultivating trusting relationships; and (2) building trust through buy-in. Given the various ways in which trust was experienced, and the complicated interconnec- tions between forms of trust reported by participants, we conclude by discussing the significance of trust as a key aspect of instructional design practice.