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The everydayness of instructional design and the pursuit of The everydayness of instructional design and the pursuit of
quality in online courses quality in online courses
Jason K. McDonald
Brigham Young University - Provo
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Original Publication Citation Original Publication Citation
McDonald, J. K. (2023). The everydayness of instructional design and the pursuit of quality in
online courses. Online Learning, 27(2), 137-169. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v27i2.3470
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
McDonald, Jason K., "The everydayness of instructional design and the pursuit of quality in online
courses" (2023).
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The Everydayness of Instructional Design and the Pursuit of Quality in Online Courses
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The Everydayness of Instructional Design and the
Pursuit of Quality in Online Courses
Jason K. McDonald
Brigham Young University
Abstract
This article reports research into the everydayness of instructional design (meaning designers’
daily routines, run-of-the-mill interactions with colleagues, and other, prosaic forms of social
contact), and how everydayness relates to their pursuit of quality in online course design. These
issues were investigated through an ethnographic case study, centered on a team of instructional
designers at a university in the United States, and using the dimensions of everydayness articulated
by Troubé (2021) as an interpretive framework. Designers were observed spending significant
amounts of time engaged in repetitive practices of course refinement, meaning mundane,
workaday tasks like revising, updating, fine-tuning, or fixing the courses to which they were
assigned. Refining practices were interrelated with, but also experienced as distinct from, the
specialized processes of instructional design or innovation that the designers also applied, largely
because of their adjustable nature and the background of neutrality they provided (or the way they
faded out of designers’ explicit awareness and attention). Refinement also contributed towards the
normative structures of meaning designers shared around their work (both positive and negative).
Refining played a meaningful role in designers’ pursuit of course quality, both to help them achieve
quality, as well as to understand what the ideal of quality meant in specific instances. The article
concludes by exploring what implications these findings have for the study and practice of
pursuing quality in the context of online course development.
Keywords: Instructional design; online course design; higher education; everydayness;
qualitative research; ethnography; case study
McDonald, J.K. (2023). The everydayness of instructional design and the pursuit of quality in
online courses. Online Learning, 27(2), 137-169.
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138
How do instructional designers pursue quality in online course design? Typically, prior
research has investigated this from the perspective of the specialized processes and course design
strategies that designers employ. Zimmerman et al. (2020) represented this body of research
when they asserted that, “the impact of faculty practice, intentional online course design, and the
relationship of institutionally supported quality processes are vital to explore” (p. 148). However,
in their review of the literature related to instructional designers’ roles, Pollard and Kumar
(2022) reminded that “instructional designers do more than engaging [sic] in systematic
processes to design instruction.” By implication, therefore, understanding other practices in
which designer engage, along with how those practices connect with their pursuit of quality, are
also important issues.
There is value in better understanding the “everydayness” of instructional design, or “the
day-to-day affairs of life” (Yanchar & South, 2008, p. 93) that can significantly occupy
designers’ time—their daily routines, run-of-the-mill interactions with colleagues, and other,
prosaic forms of social contact. Studies of performance in other fields (Arndt, 1992; Wacquant,
2004)—including design (Boudeau, 2013), and teaching (Mælan et al., 2020)—have
demonstrated that the ordinary details that make up the day-to-day realities of people’s practical
experience are a crucial aspect of how they pursue excellence in a craft. Hyysalo and Hyysalo
(2018) expressed this in their study of what they called the “mundane work” of design:
By mundane work . . . we refer to the variety of actions that range from
coordinating space for workshops, to seeking participants, to sorting output, to
guesstimating what the participants can get done in a given time-frame. Such
actions might be seen as low-level design activities or as part of “silent design” by
non-designers in organizations, but some actions could just as validly be seen as
janitorial work, recruiting, secretarial work, or qualitative data analysis that just
happen to be related to design. We draw attention to how these kinds of mundane
work permeate . . . design and play an important role in its outcomes. (p 44)
While prior research in the field of instructional design has acknowledged the existence
of everyday, routine tasks associated with course design (Chittur, 2018; Schwier & Wilson,
2010), it has not made such everydayness the direct object of study. This paper reports research
into the everydayness of instructional design, drawn from an ethnographic study of online course
design at a university in the United States and using the dimensions of everydayness articulated
by Troubé (2021) as an interpretive framework, to provide insights into the relationship between
such routine practices and designers’ pursuit of quality. The specific questions studied were:
What kinds of everyday, routine practices do instructional designers engage in during online
course design? And, how did those forms of everydayness fit into designers’ pursuit of quality in
online courses?
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Literature Review
Understanding Online Course Quality
Prior literature in the field of online learning has suggested that course quality is a multi-
dimensional construct. In part, this is due to the multiple stakeholders involved, “learners,
instructors, employers, and society” (Esfijani, 2018, p. 58). Each has different perspectives and
concerns that affect what standards of excellence they prioritize. As one example, since students
manage their learning differently than faculty manage their teaching, students tend to value
techniques like “posting due date checklists” more highly than do faculty (Bolliger & Martin,
2018, p. 580). More broadly, Lenert and Janes (2017) identified a variety of differing standards
that scholars have used to measure online course quality. These included students’ satisfaction,
how well course designers followed the proper processes of course design, whether courses
exemplified certain properties considered to be high quality, and the forms of interaction that
instructors employed with their students. As a whole, existing literature indicated that course
quality is a somewhat flexible construct, defined in a variety of ways depending on the interests
of individual researchers, or the situational concerns of the contexts they studied. Interestingly,
despite the seeming logic that course quality should also include some measure of how well
students achieved desired learning outcomes, Esfijani (2018) found that this has not been the
case in much of the existing research: “The literature showed that researchers and practitioners
tend to more readily consider the easily measurable aspects, that is, inputs and resources, rather
than the outputs and outcomes” of online courses (p. 64).
Prior literature has also addressed how to design for quality in online courses. A frequent
theme has been collaboration, “designing a high-quality online course requires various sources of
expertise not usually possessed by one person” (Chao et al., 2010, p. 107; see also Y. Chen &
Carliner, 2021; Davey et al., 2019; Halupa, 2019; Zimmerman et al., 2020). Another theme has
been whether designers adhere to the guidelines specified in course design rubrics (L.-L. Chen,
2016; Lenert & Janes, 2017; Martin et al., 2021; Martin & Bolliger, 2022). Providing faculty and
other staff the proper training has also been identified as important to achieving quality (Regan et
al., 2012; Scoppio & Luyt, 2017). Further, some researchers have highlighted the value of
iterative design processes in creating quality course designs (Bawa & Watson, 2017; Bowers et
al., 2021; Chartier, 2021; Moore, 2016). Iteration typically connotes either returning to a
previous phase of a design process, or repeating the same phase, based on one’s monitoring of
the results one achieves during a current phase (Adams, 2002; Verstegen et al., 2006). Although
the value of iteration for improving quality seems logical, Verstegen et al. (2006) questioned
whether this was always the case. In their experimental study of design iterations, they found that
while all their subjects iterated (corroborating the conclusion that there is an “inherent nature” of
iterating in instructional design, see Stefaniak & Hwang, 2021, p. 3351), “the number of
iterations [did] not correlate with the quality of the results” (p. 506). There is reason to temper
their assessment, however, given the nature of their experiment that placed student designers in a
highly controlled, artificial situation. Empirical research in other settings has concluded
iterations are often important for achieving high levels of design quality (Adams, 2002).
Understanding Everyday Practices and Everydayness
A common assumption underlying much of the prior literature is that formal design
processes, along with the related, specialized strategies that instructional designers are trained to
employ, are the proper unit of analysis when studying how they pursue the creation of high-
quality online courses (however so defined). Chen and Carliner (2021) summarized this in their
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systematic review of literature concerning designer-faculty relationships in higher education:
“Instructional designers play an essential role in ensuring the quality of the online courses by
effectively employing technology, designing pedagogically sound learning materials, and
managing the flow of the course-design process” (p. 472). However, research in design studies
more broadly provides grounds for questioning this assumption (Campbell et al., 2019;
Heinemann et al., 2012; Matthews, 2009; Matthews & Heinemann, 2012; McDonald et al., 2021;
Sharrock & Anderson, 1994). As Matthews (2009) concluded, “the very idea that good design
work is, or can be, the straightforward outcome of the application of a method was not something
ever vindicated by the results of methods-based design [research] programmes” (p. 65). This is
not to say that designers’ application of formal processes is unimportant. Rather, this research
has recognized that design cannot be reduced to method or strategy alone (Fleming, 1998).
Researchers have found that studying design as a rule system that designers apply, or a set of
strategies that translates a body of theory into practice, fails to capture the richness of exactly
how designers draw “upon a range of social resources, and in a real way make design out of
whatever interactions are available to them in a particular moment of a particular circumstance”
(McDonald et al., 2021, p. 4). A fuller picture of design practice is provided when one also
studies the everyday routines, interactions, and other forms of social contact in which designers
engage (Boudeau, 2013; Hyysalo & Hyysalo, 2018).
Similar issues have been observed in other fields. Scholars from fields as diverse as
athletics (Arndt, 1992; Wacquant, 2004), teaching (Mælan et al., 2020), psychiatry (Troubé,
2021), ethics (Horton, 2008), and philosophy (Lefebvre & Levich, 1987) have drawn comparable
conclusions, namely that to fully understand human practices one must attend to “the (too-easily
and too-often overlooked) philosophical and empirical importance of ostensibly banal, everyday
happenings” of the participants (Horton, 2008, p. 265; emphasis in original). Often, the study of
everydayness has taken an informal shape, typically cataloging the quotidian events and
activities in which people participate as part of their everyday experience within a domain of
practice.
However, Troubé (2021) recently developed a more formal framework of everydayness.
By summarizing and codifying prior work in the area into a model of the dimensions of
everydayness, her framework is meant to “guide” study of people’s experience “with the
everyday,” and provide a rigorous basis to “examine the function” of discrete events and
activities to assess how they actually fit into people’s immersion in the everyday (p. 20). These
dimensions are:
Repetition. Everydayness is a composition of common, frequent, repeating, and regular
activities and events.
Adjustability. Everyday activities are experienced in a fluid flow in which people move in
and out, constantly refining or adapting their actions to fit the shape of the circumstances they
encounter.
Neutrality. Discrete activities and events of which everydayness is composed rarely draw
peoples’ explicit attention, nor do people typically deliberate about which everyday events in
which to engage. Instead, everydayness forms a neutral field against which the rest of the events
in which people participate stand out. So, in this context neutral does not mean people do not
have affective responses to everyday practices (see the dimension of normativity), but that such
practices themselves are usually not the object of intentional thought.
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Normativity. People are not indifferent to the everyday. Everydayness fits into the normative
structures of shared meaning people experience within a practice, and so contributes towards
what they view as desirable and undesirable, better and worse, and so on.
Although Troubé (2021) brought these dimensions together into a formal framework, she
did not develop them originally. Prior research supports each dimension as an aspect of what
makes up everyday existence, along with the value of studying that everydayness through
scholarly means. Of course, the dimension of repetition has a certain self-evidence to it. If the
definition of everydayness encompasses “the day-to-day affairs of life,” as Yanchar and South
stated (2008, p. 93), then one would expect it to include the recurring events that comprise so
much of the day-to-day (Stern, 2000; Suchman et al., 2019). The dimension of adjustability can
be found in the work of researchers like Dunne (1997), and Stanley and Williamson (2017). In
particular, Stanley and Williamson discussed how the adjustability of the everyday differs from
similar constructs such as iteratively cycling through the steps of a process, noting that people’s
everyday adjustability is, “faster and more flexible” than process iteration, as well as evidences a
greater sensitivity “to the subtleties of novel situations” that allows for more seamless adaptation
(p. 719). The dimension of neutrality has been articulated in a number of research traditions,
notably in philosophy by scholars such as Dreyfus (2014) and Wrathall and Londen (2019), and
empirically by researchers like Garfinkel (1968) and Liberman (2013). Wrathall summarized
much of the dimension of normativity by referring to Heidegger’s (1962) well-known example
of hammering: “When hammering, we understand and encounter a hammer without having to
have any reflective thoughts about it at all. Indeed, we hammer best when we are not deliberately
trying to do so” (Wrathall, 2006, p. 35). Finally, the dimension of normativity has also been
articulated by scholars such as Dreyfus (2005), and Yanchar and Slife (2017). Summarizing how
normativity fits into everyday practices, Yanchar and Slife stated that
The [normative] reference points entailed within those shared practices are part of
the publicness of practices; they are the primary means by which practices
provide a basis for meaningful interaction among people, even when individual
persons’ actual ways of participating in practices differ in significant respects or
evince varying degrees of competence. In short, [normative] reference points are
ontologically real aspects of practices that make it possible for there to be
anything like adequate and coherent, or even excellent, involvement in the world.
(p. 149; emphasis in original)
These dimensions of everydayness provide a foundation for the current study.
Instructional designers engage in many activities that their methods and models do not
encompass (Cox & Osguthorpe, 2003; Pollard & Kumar, 2022), and all of their practices should
be legitimate objects of research to understand how such interactions contribution to quality
design outcomes. In this study, instead of examining specialized processes that instructional
designers apply, I focused on their everyday, quotidian activities—those that have typically
escaped scholars’ attention in prior research—to understand the part such practices play in
achieving quality in online course design. I used the dimensions of everydayness, as articulated
by Troubé (2021), as an interpretive frame to both define designers’ everyday practices and
explore how they fit into the overall structure of their experience of the pursuit of quality. Given
the importance of everydayness in other fields, this research promises to reveal aspects of how
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instructional designers pursue online course quality that are easy to overlook when one focuses
on the formal design practices that have typically been investigated through prior research.
Method
This was a single case study of the pursuit of quality in online course design. The scope
of the case was a department tasked to develop online courses at a high research activity
university (R2) in the United States, that I will refer to as the Online Course Office (OCO).
Site and Participants
The OCO was established as a centralized resource to help departments and individual
instructors design and maintain the online courses they offered. It provided instructional design
support, media production services, academic support for teaching (e.g., student success
managers, teaching assistants), and other administrative functions (e.g., copyright clearance,
learning management system (LMS) support). At the time of the study, the OCO employed eight
full-time instructional designers, supported by a staff of 15-20 part-time and student employees
(a number that frequently fluctuated). At any given time, approximately 20 other full-time
employees, and hundreds of part-time and student employees, worked in related support areas.
The full research project studied the entire organization, along with some of the faculty members
with whom the designers worked; however, the scope of this paper only included the full-time
instructional designers (Table 1). All eight designers made themselves available for observations
and informal conversations. Five made themselves available for formal interviews (for more on
observations, conversations, and interviews, see the next section: Data Sources).
Table 1
Summary of OCO Instructional Designer Backgrounds
Designer
(pseudonym)
Gender
Race/
Ethnicity
Education
level
Years of
ID
experience
Instructional
design expertise
Other
background
experience
Formally
interview?
Andy
Male
White
MS
3.5
Instructional
design leadership;
learner
engagement
High school
teaching
Yes
Britney
Female
White
MS
24
Cognitive
apprenticeship
Hi-tech
industry
No
Carrie
Female
White
PhD
3.5
Holistic
educational
models
Non-profit
audience
research
Yes
Daniel
Male
White
MS
12
Human
performance
improvement
K-12 teaching;
Hi-tech
industry
Yes
Ethan
Male
Polynesian
PhD
2
Gamification;
language
acquisition
College
teaching
No
Frank
Male
White
MS
21
Student-student
interactions
Software
development
Yes
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Gina
Female
Hispanic
MA,
TESOL
12
Language
acquisition
TESOL
administration
Yes
Harris
Female
White
MA,
Second
Language
Teaching
3
Language
acquisition
College
teaching
No
Scoping the research to a single case allowed for in-depth exploration of the instructional
designers’ everyday practices—practices that are presumed to be so self-evident they do not rise
to the level of interest of most researchers—providing insight into the pursuit of quality as the
designers experienced it (Packer, 2018). However, case studies do not test a hypothesis about
effective means of designing better online courses, nor can one generate generalizable guidelines
for what defines quality in an online course. Therefore, this research was not designed to
establish the importance of any particular instructional design method in the pursuit of course
quality, nor was it a study to find evidence of particular techniques in designers’ work. Neither
was this research an evaluation of the OCO designers’ effectiveness in their course design
practices. The activities in which they engaged were studied as their attempts to pursue quality;
whether they actually achieved it remained out of scope. But even without providing these types
of findings, case studies are still a valuable form of scholarship. Case study researchers assume
that the depths of the world are inexhaustible, and that “every existing human community must
have grasped something essential about the way the world is” (Packer, 2018, p. 300), meaning
cases can reveal aspects of phenomena that remain hidden when studying issues from more
analytic perspectives (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Stake, 1995). These perspectives are valuable, even if
they are uncommon or challenge common views, if a community of practitioners are to learn all
that they can about accomplishing the outcomes they desire (cf. McDonald & Yanchar, 2020).
Data Sources
The data for the case were drawn from an ongoing, ethnographic study of online course
design in higher education. Ethnography is the study of a form of life by coming into direct
contact with those who experience it, and observing and participating with them over time. It
often focuses on a community’s “least known and least spectacular” practices, “the drab and
obsessive routine[s]” that are frequently overlooked when research is conducted to test abstract,
theoretical constructs (Wacquant, as quoted in Packer, 2018, p. 491). The full corpus of
ethnographic data for this study included (a) observations of work as it happened at the OCO; (b)
innumerable, short conversations with designers and others throughout the workday as course
design events occurred; (c) formal interviews; (d) artifacts generated to support, or produced
during, the course design process; and my own participation as I immersed myself in work at the
OCO (Schensul et al., 1999). Procedures for gathering each of these data types are described
below.
Observations were primarily conducted on-site in the OCO offices. However, at times
instructional designers met with faculty members or other staff through video conference, and in
such instances, I also joined the event remotely. Early observations were open-ended, where I
gathered the types of information specified by Schensul et al. (1999): the settings where work
took place; events and event sequences; counting, census-taking, and mapping the relevant
environment; and noting indicators of social or other differences (cf. pp. 96-97). Later in the
study I targeted specific events, such as observing course kickoff meetings, or media planning
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meetings. As the study progressed, OCO employees also invited me to activities they thought
were relevant, such as meetings with a faculty member about a course challenge. In these cases,
the information I gathered was customized to each event, to record details pertinent to the event’s
purpose, or details related to the reason for which I sought out the activity (e.g., when I observed
a designer setting up a course in the LMS, I gathered information on what the designer was
attempting to accomplish, difficulties faced along the way, and how he explained his actions to
the faculty member with whom he was working). When an invitation to an event was extended at
the last minute, I relied on Emerson et al.’s (2011) protocol for what to record: descriptions,
dialogue, and characterization (cf. pp. 58-73).
During most weeks of the study, I was at the OCO offices for either two or three days.
The organization provided me with a workstation, allowing me to be present for spontaneous
events that arose, as well as planned activities. Observations ranged from less than an hour to a
full workday. All observations were documented through jottings in-the-moment, expanded out
to full field notes as soon as possible after events were complete (Emerson et al, 2011). Early in
the study, select observations were also video-recorded and transcribed for analysis to gather
sample transcripts of common event types (e.g., an administrative meeting, or a course kickoff
meeting).
Short, informal conversations with OCO employees were usually associated with each
observation. Some conversations happened during the observation, where I would ask a question
to clarify what I was observing, ask how common that activity was in the OCO’s work, or to
gather other information related to my purpose in the observation. These conversations were
rarely based on pre-written questions; my purpose for the observation served to guide me in what
topics to discuss. At other times, the people I was with initiated conversations in which I engaged
as long as they were interested. If the event itself did not allow for conversation, as it concluded I
asked those from whom I was interested in gathering information if they could talk for a few
minutes. In some cases, I also emailed individuals to ask follow-up questions if they were not
available for further conversation. Follow-up conversations or emails were intentionally brief to
avoid interfering with my informants’ work. All informal conversations were jotted in the
moment and transcribed later, as described above. Emails were included in the project record
verbatim.
Formal interviews were carried out beginning at the study’s half-way point and continued
until it concluded. Five of the eight instructional designers made themselves available for
interviews. I also interviewed five faculty member the OCO worked with, purposefully sampled
to gather a range of backgrounds, experience, and employment status at the university (e.g., both
full-time and adjunct faculty). Each person was interviewed twice. First interviews started with a
standard, semi-structured protocol, asking about prior experience with course design, the
person’s personal definition of quality, and notable instances where they both achieved and
failed to achieve quality. Follow-up questions were then asked to clarify or solicit more
information. Interviews were structured so that people were allowed to fully recount their stories
even if that meant not all questions in the interview protocol could be asked (Brinkmann, 2013).
Based on interviewees’ responses in the first interview, as well as events in which I observed
them participating, a custom interview protocol was crafted for each person and a second
interview was conducted between three and six weeks after the first. Interviews ranged from 40 –
60 minutes. All interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis. I conducted all first
interviews alone, with a colleague joining me during all second interviews.
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The OCO also made numerous artifacts available to me throughout the study. I was given
unrestricted access to their training materials, administrative documents such as organization
charts, instructional design models, and course standard rubrics. On a case-by-case request I was
given access to institutional data, such as student evaluations of online courses, enrollment rates
by semester, and course budgets. At times, OCO employees included me in email conversations
with their colleagues. If everyone in the email had consented to be part of the study, I also
included these as part of the project record.
Finally, my own participation in work at the OCO formed a part of the project record. As
a researcher-practitioner, I have over 20 years of experience with online course design. Based on
this, OCO administrators allowed me to engage in certain activities specified in their course
design process, such as regularly scheduled course evaluations, to experience first-hand some of
the factors involved in how the organization assessed course quality. As individual instructional
designers gained confidence in me, they also allowed me to participate with them in selected
design activities, such as advising faculty members on course design options, or completing
reviews of faculty-submitted course materials. I recorded my own participation through in-the-
moment jottings, later expanded out to field notes, as described above. While I did not base any
conclusions on data solely gathered through my own participation, such events were nevertheless
valuable as part of the study methodology. Participation sensitized me towards issues to discuss
with employees as I observed them throughout the day or informed the development of future
observation guidelines. My own participation also built credibility with those I interacted with,
which, in turn, tended to lead to more openness on their part when I approached them for
information.
From this full corpus, the specific data used in this article were observations that took
place during the first quarter of 2022, supplemented by formal interviews and informal
conversations with instructional designers during the same period.
The ethnographic fieldwork, and later data analysis, were conducted from a perspective
that viewed people and their involvement in a world of practice as found in writings of scholars
such as Dreyfus (2014), Packer (2018), and Wrathall (2006). Central to this was the assumption
that people’s “practical activities constitute [both] mind and world” (Packer, 2018, p. 315).
These scholars have persuasively argued that “humans are fully embodied, engaged agents . . .
situated in a lived world of significance,” which means that study of human activity does not
need to rely on “a more fundamental reality of causal forces assumed to control . . . human
participation” (Yanchar & Slife, 2017, pp. 147–148). This contrasts with other views common in
social science, that either abstract cultural forces outside of people’s control determine how they
experience the world, or that their subjective perceptions construct their views of reality.
Therefore, issues related to this study such as what counted as course quality, or what counted as
the pursuit of quality, were taken to be best revealed through study of the local, practical work of
specific instructional designers, without appeal to either systems of social rules or internal mental
states.
Data Analysis
My data analysis was guided by the dimensions of everydayness as articulated by Troubé
(2021) and described earlier. The model served as an interpretive framework, meaning that
rather than attempting to prove that the OCO’s practices aligned with the model, or,
alternatively, studying the model itself using the OCO as a convenient site, it instead helped me
elucidate and clarify aspects of the core phenomenon under study—the practices that
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instructional designers used to pursue online course quality. As Liberman (2018) observed,
research models are too blunt an instrument to fully express the reality of a social situation, but
they can still be useful to the extent that they help researchers pay attention to aspects of a
group’s “local work of . . . coordinating their actions” that might otherwise be missed. Similarly,
Horton (2008) emphasized that when studying the more messy and ephemeral aspects of human
existence, like everydayness, attempting to reduce them to a model or formal set of principles
could in large measure conceal the very aspects of them that make them interesting and
important objects of study in the first place. He said that by its very nature, everydayness exists
“in excess of most extant Social Scientific assumptions, accounts and understandings and –
relatedly – [is] significantly messier than the kinds of assumptions, accounts and understandings
which are predominant in Social Scientific disciplines” (p. 366; emphasis in original). Therefore,
in my analysis I sought to use the everydayness framework to draw my attention to dimensions
of the phenomena under study that I might otherwise miss, instead of attempting to reduce
everydayness to a simple expression of the four dimensions.
Data analysis proceeded using principles described by Packer (2018). The goal was not to
summarize designers’ experience into a set of codes or otherwise abstract expressions, but to
develop a composite account of the structure of their experiences, built from analysis of their
lived activities. This consisted of (a) detailed readings of all interview and observation
transcripts, and observation field notes from the specified period; (b) identifying instances where
designers’ pursuit of quality in course design became explicit; this often occurred when
participants experienced a breakdown in an activity that allowed for direct examination and
questioning about what, functionally, was occurring. This included myself as a researcher, where
my own assumptions about designers’ pursuit of quality were challenged, and so I directly
questioned them about events when, or shortly after, they occurred; (c) crafting an initial
thematic structure of salient topics related to designers’ pursuit of quality consisting of short
statements that summarized aspects of their experiences; (d) refining this structure using part-
whole analysis (Vagle, 2018), where themes were compared against the whole of the original
data, as well as comparing the whole to the details of the thematic structure; this resulted in
clarifying, combining, eliminating, or adding themes; (e) writing a narrative account of the
thematic structure to address my research questions.
Creating a narrative report of the thematic structure allowed me to craft a coherent
account that highlighted situational details most relevant to my research questions (Newkirk,
1992). Yet drawing attention to these factors meant that other important issues were, of
necessity, placed into the background. The lack of discussion about other matters should not be
taken as evidence of their absence, but rather that they were out of scope of this paper’s research
questions. Further, the narrative reports a composite account developed both from participants’
quotes as well as summaries and paraphrases out of my field notes. Such a rich narrative allowed
me to highlight how everyday practices fit into designers’ pursuit of quality, without translating
their experiences into abstract concepts that artificially harmonized their character (Packer,
2018). I refer to individual designers using pseudonyms in extended examples or when directly
quoting them, where tying an account to specific designers’ backgrounds may be useful in
interpreting their actions. But in other cases, typically those where a certain action or activity
was observed multiple times in the work of multiple designers, I refrained from naming
individuals to avoid a misperception that the event under discussion was isolated to one person
only. I have also made minor adjustments to quoted comments to eliminate phrases that could
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compromise anonymity, or to ensure they can be understood when excerpted from the full
transcript.
Study Limitations
While this method allowed for detailed study of how instructional designers experienced
the pursuit of quality, it did come with some limitations. The OCO was formed to address
specific concerns in a particular context at a single university. The OCO’s practices were not
static; the OCO was an ever-evolving organization, and this research was only a snapshot of their
practices at a specific time. While it is reasonable to conclude their practice of instructional
design resembled that of designers elsewhere, they also customized their approach for their
situational needs. It could be that instructional designers in other organizations experience the
pursuit of quality in a different manner. Consequently, the details reported through this research
may not generalize to every situation. Yet as Packer (2001) argued, “while big generalizations
may appear more powerful, details are more informative, especially in the long run” (p. 9).
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide numerous details, hoping to encourage
readers’ reflection on how they experience everydayness in the pursuit of quality themselves.
Further, given the richness of practice at the OCO, this report can only provide a partial view of
designers’ pursuit of quality. So rather than aiming for a comprehensive account, I aspired to one
that could sensitize readers to the forms of instructional design that the designers at the OCO
experienced. By this I mean an account where readers are given a view into how the participating
designers “see and feel” issues related to the pursuit of quality, in the hope that similar issues
will “become more see-able and feel-able to [readers] on their own” (McDonald, 2022).
Findings
I present my findings in three parts (Table 2). First, to provide background and context
for my core findings I briefly discuss how online course quality was defined at the OCO. Second,
I offer an account of the everyday practices in which designers engaged during online course
design, that I will refer to as practices of refinement. This includes describing how refinement
was both associated with, but distinct from, the formal, specialized processes that are often
considered definitive of online course design. As part of this analysis, I used the framework of
everydayness as articulated by Troubé (2021)—repetition, adjustment, neutrality, and
normativity—to help define refinement and distinguish it from the formal processes with which
it contrasts. Third, I explore how everyday practices of refinement fit into designers’ pursuit of
quality in online course design at the OCO. This part of the analysis drew again on the
everydayness dimensions to help highlight the fit.
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Table 2
Summary of Everydayness at the OCO
Issue
Description
Instructional
designers’
definitions of
quality
• Explicit definitions were broad and interconnected, and consistent
with prior research.
• In practice, however, designers tended to operationalize quality
standards that were most easily definable and quantifiable.
The structure of
everydayness
• Everydayness was characterized by the frequent and repetitive
practices of refinement.
• Refinement practices were interrelated with specialized practices
of creativity as well as processes of instructional design.
• Designers experienced refinement differently than they did the
processes they applied; refining was more adjustable than their use
of design processes, and during much of their day-to-day work
they did not look to design procedures for instructions on what
they should do to achieve their goals (e.g., refining was neutral).
• Designers’ positive and negative responses to refinement (both of
which influenced their style of participation in course design)
revealed some of the normativity associated with the sense of
meaning designers shared about their work.
Course refinement and
the pursuit of quality
• The frequency (repetition) of refinement practices meant they
often became a primary mechanism through which designers’
pursued course quality.
• At times, instructional designers employed refinement practices to
align emerging work with a known vision, fluidly adjusting the
activities they deployed as necessary to achieve the goal they were
pursuing.
• Sometimes, designers did not have an articulated vision of quality,
in which cases refinement practices helped them both explore
what quality meant in that instance, at the same time they
attempted to pursue it.
• Pursuing quality through refinement also reflected a dimension of
neutrality; designers usually refined ideas that occurred to them in-
the-moment, taking little, if any, time for reflection before making
changes, and rarely employing formal problem-solving methods to
align a course with measures of quality.
• Some evidence suggested that for at least some designers,
refinement was desirable (it played a different normative role)
because it opened possibilities for pursuing novel course
innovations, where routine requests drew attention to opportunities
for inventive, creative designs.
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Defining Online Course Quality at the OCO
When the topic of course quality arose in settings such as OCO staff meetings, it was
common for instructional designers to offer multiple definitions (consistent with what was found
in prior literature). A sampling of how they described a quality course included indicators like:
(a) promoting high levels of engagement between students and instructors; (b) its ability to
engage students’ attention; (c) how well it promoted experiential learning; (d) how well it
adhered to the OCO’s style guide; (e) if it was free of typos or other production mistakes; or (f)
whether it was well organized and simple for students to navigate. Further, in these discussions
the designers typically assumed that forms of quality were mutually reinforcing. For example,
they thought it was easier for students to meaningfully engage with instructors in a course that
was well organized than in one that was poorly structured.
In practice, however, designers’ operationalization of course quality was more complex.
A complete description of how is beyond the scope of this paper, so for my purposes I only note
that in contrast to the interconnected character of their explicit definitions of quality, in concrete
cases designers tended to prioritize some measures of quality over others. Often, what counted as
quality was a factor of how well a course complied with the university's myriad, detailed policies
and standards, or other criteria that could be definitively and quantitatively measured. Yet for
purposes of interpreting the research that follows, it is sufficient to recognize that while
designers may have meant any of several kinds of measures when they referred to quality, their
practices in the pursuit of that quality were similar regardless of their aim in any instance.
Everydayness at the OCO
The Repetitive Practices of Course Refinement
Exploring instructional designers’ experiences of everydayness at the OCO began by
identifying the most frequent, routine, and regular activities in which they engaged (the
dimension of repetition). These were what I will call the instructional designers’ practices of
course refinement. Refinement practices did not exist in isolation, however. They were found in
an interrelated structure with designers’ application of specialized methods of creativity and
innovation, along with formal processes of instructional design. Therefore, practices of
refinement are best understood by articulating their relationship to the other, more formal,
activities to which they were related.
Formal Practices of Creativity, Innovation, and Instructional Design. Least
frequently seen in designers’ work were activities commonly associated with creativity and
innovation: framing design challenges, employing ideation processes (such as brainstorming) to
generate large numbers of ideas, formal cycles of prototyping, and so on. With one exception (to
be discussed in a later section), instructional designers reported these kinds of activities as
occupying the smallest percentage of their course design work, depending on the designer
between 1% and 20%. And the OCO program administrator estimated that across the
organization such events comprised no more than 10–15% of designers’ course-related
workload, overall.
More common, but still in the minority, were activities identified in instructional design
processes, such as writing learning outcomes, selecting instructional strategies, or generating
requirements for course assets. Also included were production activities where course
components were initially fashioned, like developing an interactive unit in eLearning authoring
software, filming an instructional video, or even jotting down a quick draft of assignment
instructions. Much of the OCO’s instructional design work was templatized. Designers
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completed a standard course design document, consisting of prompts that guided them through
the major phases of their instructional design process. And they followed a style guide and
course template for their LMS that governed the look and feel of elements like course navigation,
branding, and the display of learning materials. Designers’ estimates of how often they
participated in formal instructional design practices varied widely; depending on where their
courses were in the product lifecycle, in any given month they may have engaged in nearly no
instructional design activities, or up to 60% of course-related work could have been spent so
occupied. However, the program administrator estimated on average, conventional instructional
design practices made up approximately 30% of designers’ workload.
Everyday Practices of Course Refinement. Designers’ most frequent course-related
activities were mundane, workaday tasks associated with refining the courses in their portfolios:
revising, updating, expanding, extending, elaborating, completing, modifying, editing,
calibrating, clarifying, fine-tuning, adjusting, fixing. If designers did not perform these tasks
themselves, they supervised student employees who did, which included giving instructions,
showing students how to complete tasks and correcting work if necessary—all activities with an
equally mundane character. While some refinement tasks were quick and easy to complete on
their own, the cumulative effect of all of them was that most designers found themselves
engaged in this kind of work most of the time. Except for Andy, who had unique supervisory
duties, designers reported that anywhere from 40% to over 90% of a typical week could be spent
refining courses they were developing or maintaining. And the program administrator estimated
that across the organization, designers were regularly devoting half of their course-related
worktime, or more, to such tasks.
This is not a claim that refinement was categorically distinct from designers’ other
practices. Instead of such practices possessing inherent properties that distinguished them from
alternatives in an essential sense, it was rather that refinement fit into their experience as
instructional designers differently than did their application of specialized processes. To help
avoid misunderstanding, I recognize two interrelations between the varying kinds of practice I
have described. First, there were obvious connections between creating an initial version of a
course component—a learning activity, or a first draft of learning outcomes—and the revisions
necessary to polish them (to be discussed in a later section). Second, there could be fluid
boundaries when designers considered their application of a process to have ended, and their
activities of refining to begin. For instance, Carrie told me about her work to design an
interactive quiz. She clearly contrasted major phases of her work as being different, describing
the relatively simple process of initially populating a quiz template (what she called, “just trying
to get content in,”) as separate from the rounds of fine-tuning she completed later, referring to
these as “clicking around in the program to look for solutions,” or “looking for more efficient
ways of doing what I originally did.” Yet she did not identify a defining moment when she
unambiguously considered the “content [to be] in,” and so her “clicking around” had begun.
Distinguishing Course Refinement from Other Practices: Adjustability and Neutrality
But even with such interrelations, considering refinement as simply being an obvious
follow-up to designers’ application of a process that was so insignificant as to not be worth
mentioning or exploring, seemed to distort aspects of their experience as instructional designers.
For instance, refinement practices tended to afford high levels of adjustability, meaning that
designers fluidly and seamlessly deployed them to fit the shape of emerging needs. This was
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typified by the difference between what Daniel called using a process to “start from scratch,”
compared to what Frank called “tweaking.” In the first, designers tended to focus on reaching a
certain milestone, or concluding a distinct event, like how they talked about being “done” with
the learning outcomes phase when they had written 2-5 outcomes per module (the OCO’s
standard), even though they freely acknowledged that they would continue to modify the
outcomes throughout the project. Being done may have required more effort for some phases
than others, implying a spectrum of completion criteria and completion effort. But designers
typically could predict, at least conceptually, what it would mean for them to conclude various
phases of their formal processes. But, as implied by the term “tweaking,” they typically
considered refinement to be much more open-ended than their application of a formal method.
Instead of focusing on a milestone’s conceptual conclusion state, they did not consider
themselves done until they had achieved a certain standard of quality—which could be
somewhat relative based on situational factors like an instructor’s taste—or external events
prevented them from doing so (like running out of time). Designers usually did not experience
these rounds of revision as backtracking, or returning to a previous process phase, except in rare
cases where they completely abandoned their work and formally conceded they were starting
again.
Conflating refinement with specialized practices also implies that designers consciously
and straightforwardly applied steps from their formal processes when refining, which was
usually not the case. Instead, refinement practices tended to reflect an element of neutrality,
where what stood out to designers were the motivations for which they engaged in an activity,
rather than the steps of those activities directly. This was often apparent through the language
designers used when discussing their work. When engaged in tasks like revising, fixing, or
updating, designers tended to talk about what they were doing at the artifact level—double-
checking the overview page, or editing a rubric—rather than how such work contributed towards
the macro steps of a process. This was different from when they perceived themselves as
intentionally applying instructional design practices, where they often talked about their work in
process-centric terminology (e.g., documenting learning outcomes). Frequently, neither the
language nor logic of design processes provided designers guidance for completing tasks of
refinement, or at least the connection was very indirect. For example, common refinement
activities could include editing a draft lesson page (taking it from rough notes to polished prose),
or updating assignment point values to better reflect the effort students were expected to invest.
Both examples typified a more granular type of work, and sometimes even different skillsets
than are usually articulated in the phases of instructional design models. So, describing
designers’ practices of refinement as being different from instances where they perceived
themselves as applying formal methods is partially meant to emphasize how much of their
experience as instructional designers was not expressed, or explicitly guided, by the theoretical
definitions of either innovation or instructional design practices.
Further, how designers practiced what I am calling refinement differs from how their
formal processes could be considered adjustable, such as in the iterative cycles sometimes
included in instructional design processes. Design iterations at the OCO usually fit into
designers’ practice in the manner implied by prior research—as deliberately returning to a
previous design step or phase based on a judgment that returning to that step was necessary to
make progress. An example might be intentionally returning to an ideation phase to brainstorm
new assignment types based on evaluative data that suggested current assignments were
repetitive. But, as has been discussed, even though this type of iteration could be described as
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adjustable, it was not always how designers at the OCO navigated course refinements, where a
fluid, open-ended adjustability, along with the neutrality of their activities, were more of the
norm. Designers could be found adding a new video to the LMS, in the process of which they
might field a call from an instructor, asking for an update to one of the course’s learning
outcomes. So, they would immediately open the design document and adjust some wording
there. As they completed this, they would straightaway return to the course and begin another
task, which might have been completely different from their previous work, such as fixing a typo
in a page header.
Such fast-paced, frequently changing work was common at the OCO. Designers were
often found task switching (cf. Mark et al., 2005), and it took intentional effort for them to
arrange their schedules to focus on a discrete process or event uninterrupted. As they so rapidly
moved from activity to activity, it was rare for designers to associate what they had done with a
demarcated phase of a design process, nor did they perceive themselves as recursively moving
backwards or forwards through a process. Improvements occurred in a more fluid manner, where
they changed individual elements of a course bit-by-bit, page-by-page, and section-by-section. It
was true that they did sometimes intentionally iterate through process phases, and when this
happened, practices of refinement were often aspects of their iterations. So, iteration may have
been one way designers refined their courses, but it did not exhaust the possibilities. Equating
them somewhat distorts designers’ mode of engagement with course design.
In fact, when I observed designers refining, what phase of a process they were in was not
usually of significance. What mattered was the immediate issue before them, and to address it
they drew on ordinary, run-of-the-mill tasks, without concern about how, or even if, what they
were doing counted as a design process step. For instance, I watched Andy calibrate settings in
an LMS feature, toggling options on and off to see if he could make it behave in a way that
accomplished what a professor wanted. Gina told me she would regularly read course pages and
adjust “sentence length . . . [for] clarity.” And it was common at the beginning of a semester to
find designers performing mundane updates to course details, to reflect new assignment due
dates, and changes to instructors and teaching assistants. While it is possible, from a theoretical
standpoint, to fit these examples into design process phases, broadly speaking, doing so conceals
at least some of the ways such activities fit into designers’ experience qua designers. When
refining, they did not ordinarily perceive themselves as deliberately applying design procedures,
in the sense of looking to such procedures for instructions on what they should do to achieve
their goals (neutrality). What seemed to matter more was keeping their attention on the situation
itself, fluidly and flexibly navigating the terrain by using the contours of the circumstances they
encountered to determine what task to complete next (adjustability). Designers addressed needs
as they arose, using whatever skills were appropriate regardless of whether they were
recognizable as design steps or not, and without apparent regard for whether what they did could
be justified by a process.
The Normativity of Instructional Designers’ Practices of Refinement
Instructional designers also experienced varying affective responses to practices of
refinement, that oriented them towards different styles of participation in course design. Such
responses revealed some of the “implicit normativity” (Troubé, 2021, p. 20) associated with how
refinement contributed towards the sense of meaning designers shared about their work, or what
they considered to be desirable and undesirable about it.
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The most frequent response I heard was that refining could be tedious. Most designers
told me they enjoyed the glamorous, visible aspects of their job, represented by the innovation or
creative methods that actually constituted the lesser portion of their work. And so, they often
perceived refining—especially pedestrian tasks like adding captions to images or checking links
to ensure they went to the right source—as pulling them away from activities they preferred.
Carrie described this by saying, “I like being creative in my work, and I felt like [in] most of the
stuff I’ve been able to do so far I wasn't.” By “creative,” she was referring to discrete practices of
creativity that provided her a sense of professional satisfaction, as she clarified at another time by
describing how much she enjoyed activities like “brainstorming . . . and putting all of our ideas
on Post-It notes.” While their repetitive and routine tasks could impact designers’ personal
satisfaction with their jobs (e.g., it was not uncommon to hear that such work made their jobs
“boring,” or “dull,” despite designers’ simultaneous recognition of how necessary those tasks
were), it also had an effect on the quality issues at the center of this study. In particular, at times
designers reacted to the tedium by delaying activities of refinement, which could be somewhat
detrimental to their courses. As Carrie further described, “I spent about a week procrastinating. . .
. Instead [of completing my tedious assignments], I opted to look for other, simpler (and maybe
less urgent?) tasks.”
At other times, however, designers seemed appreciative of the chance to engage in work
they could perceive as less demanding. In these cases, tedium may have had an ironically
favorable outcome. Interestingly, despite her preference for what she described as the creative
work of instructional design, Carrie was also the most articulate in describing some of the
advantageous conditions tedious refinements could provide. She said, “I actually appreciate
having tedious things to do [sometimes] so most of my mental energy can go to learning new
things.” By “new things,” Carrie seemed to mean both personal enrichment—she specifically
mentioned "listening to lecture videos from other . . . courses so I can learn new ideas from fields
I didn’t study”—and to the possibility that monotonous tasks left her with enough mental energy
to learn new course design strategies, particularly to help her “move some of the [student
experience] from passive to active.” While the OCO expected designers to remain current in
their understanding of instructional design, the organization did not take into account that when
designers were spending time in professional development, they would have less time for other
course design activities (e.g., designers were not assigned fewer courses so they had time for on-
the-job learning). This meant most designers had to find ways of remaining current by fitting
professional development around their expected workload, a task that could be emotionally and
mentally taxing. So, Carrie seemed to suggest that periodic tedium helped her by placing her in
“a mental state where I feel up to trying something new,” as she attempted to balance both the
demands of her required work, while also devoting at least some time to the professional
development that would help her better pursue quality in current and future assignments.
At still other times, designers sometimes found practices of refinement to be actively
satisfying, especially refinements that required them to apply mental effort. Ethan explained by
saying, “balancing all the pieces, it’s a fun puzzle piece I enjoy making fit,” implying that he
could find refining to be stimulating and intellectually challenging. But such a sense of
satisfaction did not wholly eliminate other possible reactions that designers had to routine work.
They could simultaneously experience the same refinements as both satisfying and monotonous,
a possibility expressed by Carrie (which further reaction, in addition to those described earlier,
serves as additional evidence of how complex designers’ responses to refinement could be). She
illustrated the dichotomy by describing her multiple cycles of creating interactive hotspots when
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building a learning activity, “I had to do that 40 times on each of these, so that becomes kind of
tedious. . . . [but] I think it’ll be entertaining for the students, and that makes me excited.”
But despite this satisfaction that refining could bring, it was not an unambiguous good in
designers’ overall experience. At times designers encountered diminishing returns, when the
effort they put into refinements did not seem commensurate with the resulting improvements to
course quality. Further, they also described how refining could create entanglements that affected
their, or their students’, experience. For instance, they could tinker with a course so much that
the cumulative effect of their changes resulted in a complicated course that students had
difficulty using. Andy described a course where his and the instructor’s excitement about an idea
led to “scope creep,” where they continually added features that did not contribute to the
intended student experience, “there’s just too much going on, and so many methods that students
are trying to do. . . . We ended up getting too much in the weeds and we made a course that’s just
overly complex.” Frank described a related problem, where he noticed how designers’
disproportionate focus on refining one or two courses about which they were excited could lead
to them to neglect other courses that might need just as much work, albeit work in which they
were not as personally interested.
Course Refinement and the Pursuit of Quality
Practices of refinement were an important factor in instructional designers’ pursuit of
quality at the OCO. One reason for this was simply the amount of time they occupied (the
dimension of repetition). While applying specialized processes often, but not always, provided
designers with an initial shape and direction for their course designs, ultimately most of what
they considered a quality course was the result of refinement in some fashion. Activities like
editing, modifying, or updating were how designers shaped course components into forms that
more closely approached an ideal of quality. In fact, sometimes it even seemed as if designers
considered formal processes as a means of “just getting something on the page,” as Britney once
suggested, meaning something concrete no matter how imperfect, knowing that they would
refine it more carefully over time. In this sense, specialized creativity or design processes were
sometimes seen as valuable for the starting points they provided, more than any innovative or
quality solutions they directly offered.
Designers engaged in refining differently, however, depending on how they perceived the
position from which they started. When they had a vision for what course quality meant in a
particular instance, the adjustable and neutral practices of refinement fit into their work as the
means through which they shaped a component’s concrete structure and form so that it
eventually aligned with that vision. In other cases, however, designers might have perceived that
an aspect of a course was of inferior quality, but they could not articulate exactly why. When this
happened, refinement became both how they attempted to improve, as well as how they explored
what quality should actually mean for the artifact they were in the process of revising. Often,
such improvement was not the result of designers’ applying methods of problem solving to
decide what refinements to make. Instead, it reflected a dimension of neutrality, where designers
frequently made cycles of changes that occurred to them in-the-moment, with little, if any,
reflection before they accepted an idea, until they found a configuration with which they were
pleased. Further, some evidence suggested that instructional designers could sometimes use
refining to pursue novel course innovations, where routine requests to update a course became
more desirable (played a different normative role) because they drew attention towards inventive
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possibilities for improvement, without needing to apply any specialized methods for generating
creative ideas. All these possibilities are illustrated, in turn, in the report that follows.
Refining to Align with a Vision of Quality
At times, instructional designers started an assignment with a vision for what it would
mean to achieve a high level of quality. This could have been at a large scale, such as a concept
for an overarching course strategy, or at a smaller scale, like concepts for individual course
components. Their visions of quality had a variety of sources. Sometimes, an instructor came to
the project with an idea in mind, and the designer agreed it was worth developing. Occasionally,
designers may have generated a possibility in a specialized ideation or brainstorming meeting.
Often, their vision of quality was based on precedent, such as the guidelines provided by OCO
policies, or common patterns found in existing courses.
But whatever an idea’s source, at some point it had to be translated from imagination to
reality. A concept remained only that until someone—if not the designer personally, then an
individual or group the designer worked with closely—gave it a tangible structure and form that
students could experience, whether that was an interactive element students manipulated in the
course interface, or a set of instructions prompting reflection on a course topic. And because
their initial iterations rarely, if ever, fully achieved their vision, designers frequently found
themselves refining their work, particularly through step-by-step, fluid, adjustable routines
described earlier (editing, tweaking, improvising solutions incrementally, and so on). When
asked, designers could usually explicate a connection between many (though not all) of these
refinements and how they were at least supposed to contribute towards the realization of a
quality idea. Yet rarely was improving quality mentioned as the explicit aim when any
refinement began. If a purpose was stated (which was not always the case) it was generally more
targeted and tactical (as is typically expected because of the neutrality of everyday practices).
For example, in a review meeting for a set of course videos I heard Harris suggest that they
should modify the actors’ dialogue so students will get the point quicker. Or Gina often
wondered whether blocks of text in a course could be shortened.
Designers thought that the more careful they were in carrying out such refinements, the
better the resulting course tended to be; as Gina told me, “It’s sometimes those details that make
a course shine.” Regardless of how inventive or impressive were the ideas from which they
started, until those ideas had been fine-tuned it was rare for designers to consider a course or an
individual component as having achieved a high level of quality. So not only were many tasks
associated with the pursuit of quality prosaic and undramatic in nature (as described earlier),
designers often found that they also had to be meticulous, thorough, and show an exacting
attention to detail, to make sure that what they were designing turned out just right.
An example was when I observed Ethan working on an educational game for students to
practice language skills. His tasks included: (a) creating a flowchart of dozens of choices
students could make, outlining the consequences of each on their future options; (b) working
with a student employee to create in-game characters that students could encounter, and writing
multiple dialogues between players and characters to advance the story; (c) designing a grocery
store environment for students to explore, choosing specific foods and other goods to include on
the shelves, where they would practice a language by shopping for items relevant to the game’s
storyline; (d) specifying a set of options (clothing, skin tone, etc.) from which students could
customize their in-game avatar; and (e) directing the work of student developers who produced
the actual, playable interactions, which in some cases consisted of giving detailed instructions
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like, “make the music fade in at this point a little more slowly.” All this work spanned multiple
hours over multiple days to refine each feature to a level with which Ethan was satisfied. And it
culminated in a short, conceptual walk-through of the game, representing only a few minutes of
the eventual student experience, not the entire game itself.
Refining to Understand Quality
At other times, instructional designers were dissatisfied with an existing version of a
course component, but they were not sure what was needed to align it with a quality standard, or
what about it was, in fact, misaligned. Such evaluations could sometimes be expressed
affectively; instead of saying “I know what’s wrong here,” a response might have been, “I feel
like something’s wrong.” This does not mean designers never had a basis other than their
feelings upon which they made such judgments (although it was true that at times all they
experienced was personal discontent with a course’s current state). For instance, they could have
received feedback from students that suggested there was a problem they did not notice on their
own. But even when external evidence may have drawn their attention to an issue, designers
could still have been unclear on exactly what the problem was, or how to address it.
In such cases, designers’ refinement activities became mechanisms for them to both
explore what quality meant in that instance, at the same time they attempted to improve the
course itself. These types of revisions can be contrasted with those that were intended to align a
course with designers’ articulated visions of quality. In the latter, designers perceived their work
as bringing an already-understood idea to life. Their efforts were intended to ensure that what
was produced matched what they or an instructor wanted. But in the former, all designers were
aware that when they started, they thought some artifact, material, or interaction was less-than-
ideal. And so, refinements allowed them to experiment with different ideas for what they wanted,
at the same time they were trying to give what they wanted, or thought they wanted, a concrete
structure and form. Daniel described this as, “the struggle of trying to make something work
when it isn’t working shows me there’s a different thing I need to do.” He illustrated by
describing a complex set of readings and interactions he was trying to refine in one of his
courses, meant to help students understand a certain topic:
As I wrestled with this thing it suddenly occurred to me – all students really need
to do is answer these two questions. They don’t need a complex thing to
understand a bunch of stuff; all that stuff didn’t matter. Once I figured that out, it
was easy to come up with a pretty simple way to get there.
Practices of Refinement and Problem Solving
Another way practices of refinement fit into instructional designers’ pursuit of quality
was the role they played during problem-solving. If designers encountered a difficulty or
challenge, they rarely employed rational problem-solving processes or other forms of
deliberative reasoning to address the issue, such as defining a problem, identifying root causes,
specifying success criteria, deliberating on alternative solutions, or selecting an option that
maximized relevant outputs. While procedures like these were certainly used at times, more
often I observed designers responding immediately, proposing a refinement that occurred to
them in-the-moment, and taking little, if any, time for reflection. This approach further illustrated
the neutrality of practices of refinement at the OCO, where designers typically did not deliberate
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on the range of theoretically possible choices they could make, instead pursuing options that
were most visible to their attention.
Examples help illustrate. Perhaps designers suggested a technique they recently used in
another course, or a method they learned in a professional development seminar. Often, they
asked for input from an instructor or another designer, accepting with little hesitation the
responses they received. Sometimes, modifications were based on designers’ intuitive sense; a
salient feature in the environment drew their attention, and without being able to articulate why,
they simply “felt” that something about it stood out as a possible solution. Designers could even
be observed in what has been called “noodling,” or a form of “absent-minded improvisation”
where they seemed to aimlessly tinker with various ideas until something struck them as
potentially useful (cf. Claxton, 2006, p. 352). If they tried an idea but thought it was not quite
right, they would continue to refine by chipping away at perceived deficiencies one-by-one.
Usually, designers did not abandon an idea completely unless they encountered stiff resistance
from a colleague or instructor, or if, despite their efforts, they could not develop a version that
they thought “worked” sufficiently well. If such false starts happened, they would backtrack,
look for another plausible option, and start the process afresh. This continued until the designer,
often in collaboration with the instructor, judged that they had a solution they thought was
“right.” The process could take minutes, or continue over days, or even weeks.
I observed this in Daniel’s work as he met with a professor (who I will refer to as Rachel)
during a regular review of a course that was then in its pilot semester. Early in the meeting
Rachel asked a question. Her students were assigned to research a topic, then present it to the rest
of the class. Was there a way she could have students post their materials to a corresponding
lesson page in the LMS, in advance of their presentation, for other students to review? It seemed
Daniel and Rachel had an earlier misunderstanding about this assignment; apparently he had
assumed that Rachel, her TA, or he, himself, would add the material to the LMS on students’
behalf. When Daniel relayed this, Rachel was obviously disappointed. Her preference was for the
students to share their materials without her, or anyone else, having to be part of the process; “in
the [in-person] class we can do that,” she responded to Daniel’s explanation of why students in
the online course did not have edit rights to update the page. Immediately after she expressed her
disappointment, however, an idea occurred to Daniel:
Daniel: You know, within the People section. Trying to think of how this could
work, because in the course module project groups, each group has a site. Uhm,
see you can click on the three dots and say visit Group Home Page.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah
Daniel: And on that home page they have the ability to edit that and put stuff in
there.
Rachel: Um hum.
Daniel: I don’t know, I’ve never tried, I don’t know that other students can access
that group’s homepage.
Rachel: That’s a good question. Uhm, so yeah. They have, they had access, of
course, to sign up for the groups. And then I see the homepage. You get to that by
clicking the little dots? Right?
Daniel: Uhm, you know what we could do is we could create a new group in here
called, like, Course Module Assignments, or something. Put everybody into one
group.
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Rachel: Yeah
Daniel: And then on that home page I could just put headings that say,
Assignments for Course Module 1, Assignments for Course Module 3, and so
forth. And you can just tell your students, “go into that homepage, edit the page,
and add your stuff under the heading for your presentation.”
Rachel: I like that. I like that because it takes the middleman out of the process.
And it’s also, you know, it’s also something that is great for the students to learn
how to do.
In this example, Daniel proposed a solution based on the Rachel’s expressed desire to
have students add their own material to the LMS. Throughout their discussion, he refined his
proposal, figuring out how to modify his idea to fit observed constraints in the same moments the
idea was actually occurring to him. As he thought of a possible obstacle, he did not give up the
concept or consider whether another possibility might be more effective; instead, he proposed a
slight adjustment to how he could configure the LMS to make it work. He continued to fine tune
until he had articulated all the steps he thought were needed to develop his solution. Even though
what took place could retrospectively be mapped to different problem-solving steps, doing so
distorts the emergent quality of the conversation by recasting it in more deliberative, rational
terms. Further, neither Daniel nor Rachel questioned whether this was an ideal solution or not. It
was as if there were an unstated assumption that if Daniel’s proposal allowed students to add
material to the LMS, then it was worth implementing and there was no need to explore other
options.
For these reasons, Daniel’s approach typified the neutrality of practices of refinement. To
question whether the idea was appropriate for the need, to evaluate whether he was skillful in
presenting and discussing it with Rachel, or whether a different designer may have generated a
more novel solution, are all issues beyond the scope of this paper. And certainly, it is possible to
wonder what in the situation prompted Daniel to think of this solution. But even with such
questions left unanswered, what the example illustrated was the commonality of problem-solving
through practices of refinement, instead of disengaging from an issue to apply a discrete
problem-solving or design process. Indeed, the pattern of solving problems that Daniel
exemplified was not unique to this instance. Countless course refinements at the OCO were the
result of similar, spontaneous approaches of making small corrections, adjustments, and
modifications to solve an observed difficulty, rather than applying discrete problem-solving
methods when issues arose.
Course Refinements, Innovation, and the Pursuit of Quality
Earlier I described how with one exception, creativity and innovation methods were the
least frequently observed practices at the OCO. The exceptional case offers a suggestive insight
into how practices of refinement could sometimes play a different normative role in designers’
pursuit of quality than was typically the case. This example also concerned Daniel, who was
generally considered one of the OCO’s thought leaders, and who had some of the most well-
articulated ideas about course quality, including how to use pedestrian acts of refinement as
opportunities to explore novel improvements he thought would improve quality. This became
evident as I talked to him about how often he engaged innovation or creativity practices. His
response was, “I’m driven by that sort of thing. . . . I probably spend, like, half my time on that
kind of stuff.” This was so much more than other designers I asked him to elaborate further. As
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Daniel recounted his style of practice, he did not refer to distinct events where he would
brainstorm imaginative ideas, nor did he otherwise describe the use of specialized creativity
methods. Instead, he talked about how instructors’ requests for even minor, run-of-the-mill
course refinements provided him with chances to propose improvements he considered more
innovative. In fact, he did not seem to consider innovation as differing from the routines of
course refinement at all; in one conversation where the topic of both came up, he chuckled and
called them, “the same thing.” He elaborated:
If [instructors] contact me and say, “Hey, we need to clarify these instructions, or
we're having an issue with this,” I don't go in and just, like, go, “Okay, let's
change this word and change this word.” . . . I’ll throw something out to them,
and say, “Hey, what if we totally change this instruction to make it look more like
this, instead of what you have now?” And so, I feel like it's continually moving in
that higher quality direction because I don’t typically go in and just say, “Oh, let’s
fix a few typos or whatever.”
The core of Daniel’s approach was to find opportunities to innovate through his
attentiveness to routine requests for course refinements. While at times he tended to
operationalize quality as policy compliance (as did all OCO designers, as described earlier), of
all those observed in this study he seemed most consistently able to imagine and articulate how
course quality could be connected to a better student experience. He viewed the ordinary event of
updating or revising materials as an opportunity to try something new. He seemed to approach
his work from the perspective that when an issue was raised, it might be a symptom of a more
fundamental problem. More than some of the other OCO designers, Daniel was familiar with the
affordances and capabilities of the technologies the organization provided and tended to
experiment with them as part of even simple requests to find a creative solution, or, as he put it,
“jumping into it and figuring [it] out.”
This suggested that, at least at times, practices of refinement mattered to Daniel (or he
found them desirable to engage in; they played a different normative role) for different reasons
than why they mattered to his colleagues. Certainly, he also talked about them being
intellectually challenging, or tedious, so recognizing their expanded value in his experience
should not negate other possibilities. But in addition, he also found that refining practices
allowed him to create possibilities for improvement beyond the prosaic request a faculty member
may have originally approached him about. This contrasts with some of his colleagues, who
seemed to distinguish their mundane tasks more sharply from events specifically dedicated to
creative exploration, like Carrie, described earlier, who said she wanted to be “creative in my
work,” but, “most of the stuff I’ve been able to do so far . . . wasn't” (referring to the amount of
time she spent in refining instead of being involved in activities like brainstorming). Instead,
Daniel attempted to integrate the routine with the innovative, because doing so offered him a
means for improving quality beyond what he was originally asked. This was suggested by a view
he expressed in one conversation, “It’s like, you know, as long as we’re messing with this let’s
fix all the issues with it. Let’s just make this a great experience for everybody.”
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Discussion
The findings of this study offer three contributions to the field. First, by interpreting
designers’ practices of refinement from the perspective of the dimensions of everydayness, it
becomes clear how understanding these practices is crucial for developing a holistic perspective
on what is involved in the pursuit of online course quality. Second, recognizing this broadened
perspective in the practices of one organization suggests that practices of refinement, along with
everydayness more generally, should be studied in other organizations to gain additional insights
into how everydayness might be manifest during course design. And third, the pervasiveness and
importance of refinement at the OCO suggests that there is likely value in orienting instructional
design students to practices of refinement, and their role in course design, during design
education.
Practices of Refinement Provide an Enriched View of Instructional Design Practice
As has been recognized by scholars (Gibbons & Yanchar, 2010; Schwier & Wilson,
2010; Smith & Boling, 2009), limiting one’s view of the field to what is specified in the formal
models that instructional designers are taught provides an impoverished view of what is involved
in being a designer. Yet whereas prior research often focused on what could be called high-
profile elaborations to design practice (e.g., highlighting designers’ skills in diplomacy and
negotiation, their application of project management techniques, or how they often provide
faculty with professional development), one contribution this study provides is how tightly
woven together designers’ everyday routines can be with their pursuit of quality. Recognizing
the roles of refinement practices in instructional designers’ pursuit of quality provides an
enriched perspective on online course design, compared to that provided by considering their
specialized processes alone.
First, considering the amount of time designers at the OCO spent refining, along with the
affective affordances refining offered (the dimension of repetition), suggested that these forms of
practice played a predominate role in their experience as pursuers of course quality. Instead of
the everyday tasks of revising, updating, fixing, and so on being a footnote to their design
processes, my observations suggested almost the opposite. Intentional use of specialized design
or innovation methods represented the lesser portion of designers’ work, usually providing them
a starting point for the refinements that both engaged them most of the time, and that were what
they frequently credited as being what enabled them to create quality course designs. These
findings are consistent with research from other fields, where the mundane routines of everyday
life have been found to contribute to quality outcomes in ways often overlooked in scholarly
research (Boudeau, 2013; Chambliss, 1989). As this literature has suggested, excellence in a
craft is often simply a matter of being persistent—not stopping until the details are right—more
than it is choosing the proper methodology.
The dimensions of adjustability and neutrality evident in designers’ practices also
contributes to a richer perspective on course design. Quality at the OCO was often the result of
the fluidity in which designers engaged in their refining practices, in addition to the frequency.
Rather than iteration through the phases of a process being how designers accounted for
unexpected events and the constant flow of change, they instead attended to the shape of the
circumstances directly, responding however seemed appropriate regardless of how (or if) that
response could be justified by a design model. Further, designers usually did not rely on
specialized techniques to address challenges that arose, but, in contrast, pursued options that
were most saliently significant in the situation. A possible objection to these observations is that
they represent a deficient or substandard view of design practice, and that the OCO’s designers
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should be critiqued for their reliance on refining practices instead of taking the effort to apply
processes more intentionally. In response, I note the conclusions of other scholars who have
studied similar issues (Matthews & Heinemann, 2012; McDonald et al., 2021). Given the lack of
evidence that “good design work is . . . the straightforward outcome of the application of a
method” (Matthews, 2009, p. 65), asserting the necessity of design processes a priori assumes
their primacy over the everyday, and so any claim that the OCO’s designers showed a lack of
skill because they relied on the everyday ends up being a circular argument. Similarly, as Lave
(2019) stated, research “designed to explore evidence of ‘ideal’ [process-oriented] activity. . . .
[simply] creates and confirms a conception of the inferior other and thus affirms the ideal model”
(p. 23).
Finally, the normativity associated with refining practices contributes a different, but still
useful, perspective on designers’ pursuit of course quality. Designers did not approach their work
dispassionately, applying calculative reasoning about what actions to take in what circumstances.
Sometimes, like Carrie, they put off refinements they thought they should make because they
were boring. At other times, however, refining could be deeply satisfying, as we heard from
Ethan. Both cases suggest the difficulty of reducing the pursuit of quality in instructional design
to a process model. Pursuing quality was meaningful to the designers in this study for reasons
beyond only the organizational goals of completing course projects. In addition, refinement fit
into their “life story” (Yanchar, 2015, p. 119) in deeply personal ways, ways that cannot be
ignored if one is to understand the pursuit of quality in a holistic sense. Yet such dimensions only
become clear, along with the way they fit into the broader phenomena with which researchers are
typically concerned, when considered from a perspective sensitive to such issues, as is provided
by the study of everydayness.
Studying Other Refining Practices and Other Forms of Everydayness
The results of this study raise the question as to the role refinement practices play in the
work of instructional designers from other organizations, along with other forms of everydayness
in general. While there may have been specific refining activities that were unique to the OCO,
or their specific proportion of refining compared to other practices may have been distinct, it is
unlikely that practices of refinement or other forms of everydayness are absent from instructional
designers’ experience elsewhere. Yet other than passing mentions in prior literature (e.g.,
Chittur, 2018; Schwier & Wilson, 2010), how these fit into instructional design, broadly
speaking, has not been addressed. This presents an opportunity for additional research to
understand both refining and other, everyday practices of instructional design more
comprehensively. Given the conclusion of prior research that understanding design is as much
about understanding designers’ deployment of ordinary forms of social interaction, as it is about
understanding their formal processes (e.g., Button & Sharrock, 2000; Fleming, 1998; Matthews
& Heinemann, 2012), further study of the everydayness of instructional design—of which
refinement is surely only a part—promises to provide considerable insight.
Orienting Instructional Design Students to Refining Practices
Yet even with these unknowns, the findings here suggest that refining is consequential
enough that instructional design educators should consider how to orient students to these
important practices. As was noted earlier, refining is related to, but not the same as, iterating
through a design process. This distinction can be explored with students, and it is likely that
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educational time can be profitably spent teaching novice designers how to intentionally engage
in meaningful forms of refinement to achieve high levels of course quality.
A suggestive example is provided by the account of Daniel’s use of run-of-the-mill
requests as opportunities to explore more innovative course designs. Rather than disengaging
from the immediate situation to apply a distinct process for generating creative ideas, he
remained deeply engaged, satisfying both the prosaic demands of the situation while also
searching for more novel approaches of improving a course. The value of this for design students
might be in how the example accentuates how quality can come through everydayness, and so if
designers fully commit to whatever assignments are before them—even those that may be
tedious—they are in a position to pursue forms of quality that may remain closed if they only
focus on the more glamorous and alluring parts of the job. An analogy can be found in the field
of nursing, that has also turned towards understanding its own everydayness. Studies of everyday
practice in nursing have drawn attention to how the caring outcomes that are definitive of the
field are sometimes best achieved through a nurse’s ordinary routines (e.g., Arndt, 1992; Gullick
et al., 2020). There need not be an either/or dichotomy between what nurses do to care and other
aspects of their job, like completing routine paperwork. Similarly, the findings of this study
suggest there does not need to be an either/or dichotomy between pursuing quality innovations in
online course design, and the rather pedestrian work of fixing a misspelling or similar production
mistake.
Emphasizing this to students can help overcome some of the challenges of strictly
methodological approaches to design, where the typical procedure is to find a design process or
technique to address an observed problem or need. While this may be a useful approach at times,
it is needlessly limiting. Other forms of intervention, where the connection to a conventional
design or innovation process could be several steps removed, or otherwise unclear, may be more
useful in a given situation. If such practices are both modeled and validated through instructional
designers’ education, it can only expand the number of tools they have in their repertoire.
Further, shifting the focus from the design process to the designers’ willingness to fully engage
in the mundane, sometimes tedious work of refinement, could help combat what Woudhuysen
(2011) described as a near-fetishization of design, where much of the discourse in the field
disproportionately focuses on design’s most visible, appealing aspects (represented by the
process phases found in many contemporary design models). This neglects many of the other
drivers involved in an organization’s pursuit of excellence in a domain, thereby misleading
designers—as well as clients and other stakeholders—into assuming that the design methods
themselves are the most decisive factor in achieving a quality outcome. Without discounting the
importance design processes can offer, foregrounding the role of refining practices in pursuing
quality can encourage designers to wholeheartedly commit to the work of online course design,
even in it’s less-enticing forms, or even when it does not resemble what convention suggests to
them is the proper form that instructional design should take.
Conclusion
This study investigated the everydayness of online course design, specifically the
questions: What kinds of everyday, routine practices do instructional designers engage in during
online course design? And, how did those forms of everydayness fit into designers’ pursuit of
quality in online course design? By studying the work of instructional design at the OCO, I
concluded that the frequency and repetition of designers’ practices of refinement meant they
played an important role in their pursuit of quality. In addition, designers experienced refinement
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as distinct and different from their more conventional, iterative approaches to instructional
design and innovation largely through the adjustability and neutrality of refining practices
compared to the alternatives. Refining practices also contributed towards the normative sense of
meaning designers shared about their work at the OCO. These findings have implications for
understanding the pursuit of quality in online courses more broadly. Recognizing the role
refining plays in designers’ experience contributes to an understanding that instructional design
cannot be limited to its formal processes and methods. Other forms of social interaction are also
critical, and so researchers should be willing to study the full range of what they observe
designers doing. Practices of refinement can also be intentionally integrated into instructional
design curricula, teaching new designers that they have more tools available to them in their
pursuit of quality than the specialized processes that have been traditionally the focus. Finally,
foregrounding refinement practices emphasizes that designers can pursue quality through their
mundane activities; there need not be a dichotomy between engaging in the pedestrian work of
course design and the pursuit of innovative, novel forms of online course quality.
Declarations
The author declared no conflicts of interest associated with this study.
The research ethics board at Brigham Young University, USA approved this study. Informed
consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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