Comprehensive Systems Design: A New Educational Technology

Educational technology in the broadest sense is knowledge
and competence forimproving the educational process: for
using hardware (equipment), software (methods), and
"underware" (underlying organizational structures).
This volume in the Special Programme on Advanced Educational
Technology presents the results of a NATO Advanced Research
Workshop on educational systems design as a new educational
technology. The objective of the workshop was toadvance our
knowledge about the comprehensive systems design approach
for improving educational systems. The workshop was
organized for the transdisciplinary interaction of three
scientific groups representing design science,
organizational/systems science, and educationaltechnology.
Participants were selected based on their scholarship as
members of one or more of these three groups.
The book opens with theframing papers sent by the editors
to participants prior to the workshop, then presents five
sets of thematic contributions: the conceptual and empirical
contexts of comprehensive systems design, the systems design
focus, a systems view of designing educational systems, the
educational context of systems design, and high technology
focus in systems design.