Design thinking and the Deanly conversation: Reflections on conversation, community, and agency

Abstract

The article “Conversation as inquiry: A conversation with instructional designers” (Campbell, Schwier & Kenny 2006) appeared in the Journal of Learning Design Volume 1, Issue 3 in 2006. Nine years on, Professor Campbell, Dean of the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, reflects upon the arguments articulated in the original co-authored article. *** Instructional designers regularly engage in a process of professional and personal transformation that has the potential to transform the culture of institutions through faculty-client relationships. Instructional designers promote new ideas and understandings in social contexts that include other designers and clients, among others. This research program attempts to understand this process, using narrative inquiry and instructional designers’ stories of practice to explore two interconnected theoretical frames. One frame is methodological and offers a case for narrative inquiry as an alternative approach to research in educational technology. The second frame is practice-based, and uses narrative inquiry to explore the themes of reflexivity, voice, strong subjectivity and power/authority through the stories of three instructional designers.