Training higher education teachers for instructional design of competency-based education : Product-oriented versus process-oriented worked examples

Teachers involved in the development of competency-based higher education (CBE) are expected to fulfil a new role of instructional designer. As a consequence, they are confronted with the problem to translate abstract new curriculum principles into concrete learning tasks. Recent studies have shown that teachers can be trained to apply an instructional systems design methodology. After this training the teachers were able to design better learning tasks for CBE in comparison with their experienced-based design efforts. In order to optimize the training, this study compares an experimental condition with process-oriented worked examples with a conventional training condition with emphasis on product-oriented worked examples. After the training, the participants—25 higher education teachers—had to apply the ISD methodology to two design problems. The quality of the resulting design materials, as rated by experts, was higher in the product-oriented worked examples condition than in the process-oriented worked examples condition. The significance of this finding for training approaches to design methodology for CBE is discussed.