What the Heck is an Operational Principle?

An abstract idea called operational principle is described by Polanyi (Personal Knowledge, The Tacit Dimension) as the principles by which something functions. An operational principle describes the transfer of energy and information that allows the something to function. Jane Darke (British architect, in Design Studies) described these abstractions from a designer's viewpoint as primary generators. Whatever you call them, these abstractions form the effective core of a design, and designers can use the concept of "operational principle" to better comprehend what they are really designing and how to design.

I gave a talk on the operational principle at the Annual Technology in Teaching Idea Exchange (TTIX) Conference that is held each year at Utah Valley University in Provo, Utah (good conference, free). I tried to make the concept of an operational principle clear, concrete, and relevant.  I divided the video of the talk into short podcasts and put them on YouTube:

Part 1 – Operational principle defined (3:36)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL9ambSGr4s

 

Part 2 – Operational principle across fields (3:36)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKi_puMPbL0

 

Part 3 – Operational principle of a yo-yo (3:42)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ejZtRuNrg

 

Part 4 – Yo-yo operational principle in more detail (6:01)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29hTv0SRqYM

 

Part 5 – Operational principle and instructional designs (8:20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiKPAZe5lSg

 

Part 6 – The operational principle of model-centered instruction (4:08)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1xJ-aSTWGI

 

Part 7 – Model-centered instruction in more detail (5:32)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDG4R_q_2E

 

Part 8 – Results and review (3:11)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmagH69oiRc

Crystalizing a design

Designs--instructional designs--crystalize. They begin from a starting point disciplined by a seed structure and progress outward toward detail and concreteness. Good designs maintain the discipline of the seed. Bad designs are like mal-formed crystals that incorporate into their structures impurities which disturb the structure. I speculate that every design has impurities, but elegant designs have the fewest.

The seed can be any structural concept: a content structure, a strategic committment, an operational principle of instruction, a conversational pattern, a media commitment, an interaction pattern. Designers need to think through what they use individually and collectively as seeds for designs.

ISD

ISD (Instructional Systems Design/Development) is just an idea. It embodies a set of reified processes, each with its particular goal. It expresses an order of design and a dependency between design processes. In this way it guides the designer in prioritizing and sequencing decsion-making during instructional design. Embedded in the fabric of ISD  are many implicit categories that shape and condition the designer's thought, usually without the designer's awareness.

The invention of ISD was a major leap forward in its time. In a period of rapidly increasing size and complexity in electronic systems, including among other things computers and radar, ISD brought sanity into an otherwise chaotic instructional  design world. The order ISD brought to instructional design was highly desirable when compared with the lack of systematic design thinking that existed before it. Many benefits have accrued to instructional designers. It has become a standard design process--the water that design-fish no longer even have think about.

And that is the danger associated with it. Taking ISD for granted and applying it too literally has been overwhelmingly the rule. This led at one point to voluminous and highly detailed descriptions of the ISD process. It also led to the belief that ISD could be used by non-trained designers as a substitute for informed, skilled, and insightful instructional design. Untrained designers pressed into service in unfamiliar design tasks turn the ISD crank for comfort and assurance, turning ISD into an substitute for thought rather than a problem-solving tool and guide. The long-term disappointing results produced by these trends has led to a general questioning of ISD and a search for something else.

It is likely that we have been like the cook that forgot why it was important to cut the end off the ham before cooking it. We have lost the question ISD was trying to answer, and we need to find it again.