Lessons Learned from Conducting Design-Based Research Studies

Design-Based Research (DBR) focuses on developing key principles of interventions to advance both theory and practicalities of dissemination (Brown, 1992), yet its methodological details have not been quite established. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to address the pragmatics of DBR by sharing the researcher's reflections on conducting a longitudinal DBR project for five years. In an attempt to advance college teaching practices as well as theories related to student plagiarism, the project focused on refining "humble" theories on how and why college students engage in plagiarism to design classroom interventions for promoting academic integrity. Similar to the Integrative Learning Design (ILD) framework proposed by Bannan-Ritland (2003), but conducted in a much simpler and less formal format, this study followed DBR cycles from initial conceptualization to design and enact instructional interventions in authentic contexts while collecting both quantitative and qualitative data from each phase. Finally, the paper addresses some challenges encountered throughout the DBR project as well as the lessons learned from this experience. Like many previous DBR studies whose practical relevance is limited to local context, the findings from this study may not be easily generalized for other contexts.