Outline of a holistic design-based research model for higher education

Abstract

Design-Based Research (DBR) is not yet an established methodological framework in the context of higher education; nevertheless, it is increasingly used in projects in order to develop and explore new teaching/learning methods or scenarios and being taught in degree programs. The article presents the outline of a holistic DBR model and unfolds its construction in several steps based on practical experiences in applying DBR by means of existing models. The DBR cycle is visualized as a circle with five semantic fields; the choose modelling especially considers different forms of part-whole relationships in the DBR process. The model is also used to reflect on methodological issues in DBR and to consider the role of design objects.