Design Based Research

The Digital Education & Innovation Team

“When you begin thinking about design, from the very beginning you should think about designing for scalability and sustainability. A lot of times we use our classroom-based or context-based or design-based research to learn important things about learning and teaching, but we aren’t really thinking what will happen when the project ends…Design-based research is a way forward, a way to take research in a very practical sense from the laboratory to the real world and create things of meaning and value that will live in the real world and inform the work that we have to do as academics building better futures.” – Barry Fishman – Professor, School of Information & School of Education

Through our work with faculty, administrators, faculty and students at U-M, we’re often asked about how work that starts in the DEI Lab, the LED Lab, and/or the Digital Innovation Greenhouse can translate into making an impact at U-M and within the world. Our partners are often curious about how to design projects in the earliest stages to ensure this successful transition later on. We asked Barry Fishman, Chair of the Digital Innovation Advisory Group and creator of GradeCraft, to share his perspectives on these questions, including how he approaches these challenges within digital education and innovation at U-M.