The Design Principles Database as a Means for Promoting Design-Based Research

From its early stages, design-based research (DBR) has had the vision of developing into a design science of education (Collins, 1992), in which critical elements in learning environments are explored systematically in terms of their effect on learning. Herbert Simon (1969) identified various professions, such as architecture, engineering, computer science, medicine, and education, with the sciences of the artificial, which Collins et al., (2004) refer to as design sciences. One of the approaches adopted by these fields is to gather and abstract designers’ experiences and research by creating collections of design principles or design patterns that synthesize each of these fields and can guide new designs. Some examples are from the areas of architecture (Alexander et al., 1977), information science (Tufte, 1983), and computer science (Gamma et al., 1995).