CELSTEC leading in instructional design

CELSTEC is the worldwide leading institution in the field of instructional design. Researchers from CELSTEC play a leading role in the field. This was determined by an analysis of publications on instructional design by dr Zehra Ozcinar, Assistant Professor of the Near East University.

Professional journals
Ozcinar examined research publications and trends in instructional design, as found in selected professional journals during the period 1980-2008. A total of 758 documents were judged relevant to the field of instructional design.

World's leading insitution
The top three universities were the Open Universiteit Nederland, the British Open University and The University of New South Wales (Australia). “This result is very interesting: the two open universities are the world's leading institutions for sourcing instructional design documents. However, the majority of journal documents relating to instructional design had authors’ affiliations in the USA. The first place of the Open Universiteit Nederland is remarkable considering the fact that the research programme into instructional design only started in 1998.

Leading researchers
A total of 1586 authors were named in the 758 documents. Among the top five authors were three CELSTEC-researchers: Jeroen Van Merriënboer (now professor at Maastricht University), Fred Paas (just started at the Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Paul Kirschner. Together with John Sweller and Paul Chandler (both University of New South Wales), they appear to be the leading researchers in the instructional design field. In the top ten there are two more CELSTEC researchers: Liesbeth Kester en Rob Martens.

Most cited
The most cited author is Fred Paas, followed by Van Merriënboer. Paul Kirschner (4th) en Liesbeth Kester (7th) are also frequently cited. The most cited article is Cognitive architecture and instructional design by Sweller, Merriënboer and Paas (1998). This was cited 277 times and also ranked highest in the mean number of annual citations.

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