The Role of Technology

This chapter describes the role of technology in translating theory into practice for the Design for Change (DfC) process. We show how a suite of software tools known as CourseSpace (Bain, 2012, 2020) is used collaboratively by team members to enact the six theoretical principles described in Chap. 3 and referred to in other chapters of the book. They are simple rules, embedded design, emergent feedback, dispersed control, similarity at scale, and common schema. Examples are provided throughout the chapter showing how the CourseSpace software can instantiate each principle and help a design team build a shared schema for program and course design through its day-to-day work. The examples are derived from a graduate program in inclusive education, also described throughout the book, and show how the tools connect the theory to practice. It is important to note that the software design described in this chapter was an expression of learning derived from completing the design of programs and courses without design technology in the early years of the DfC-PaC process. Learning from the manual process led to the design architecture and features of CourseSpace. The software has been employed to design over 40 degree programs across a range of disciplines (Bain, 2020).