The Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) is introducing blended learning for their maintenance training of highly advanced technical systems. Blended learning environments should combine modern pedagogical approaches with state-of-the art e-learning technology.
The instructional design for such blended learning solutions is mostly very complex. RNLAF officers that are responsible for the instructional design and managing the subsequent development process face the challenge of communicating this design, with all its pedagogical, technical, and organizational implications, to different stakeholders. Examples of stakeholders are managers that have to approve the design, producers that have to implement the design, or instructors and subject matter experts that want to validate the design and the subject matter information.
The first reason of this problem is the need for different kinds of information for particular stakeholders, as these have different interests and therefore different expectations of the design documents. For example, instructors and instructional designers want to be informed about pedagogical implications, by means of textual and schematic descriptions. Also, producers want to be informed about the technical implications, by means of precise, formalized diagrams.
The second reason is the highly integrated character of organizational, technical and pedagogical aspects in traditional design documents. This implies that if one detail of particular aspect changes, it is difficult and time-consuming to trace the resulting consequences for other aspects.
This paper describes the efforts of TNO and the RNLAF to create a means--the 3D-model--to improve the representation and structuring of complex instructional designs for optimal communication to different stakeholders. The 3D-model is a decision model, based upon three dimensions. It supports designers in creating design documents that are more or less (a) stratified, (b) elaborated, and (c) formalized. This should guarantee that stakeholders are confronted with (a) one-to-one relations between pedagogical, technical, and organizational design aspects, (b) descriptions with the correct level of detail and (c) unequivocal notation systems for their particular information needs.