The topic of instructional design in research journals: A citation analysis for the years 1980-2008
<span>This study examines research publication and trends in instructional design, as found in selected professional journals during the period 1980-2008. Citation analysis was used to investigate documents relating to instructional design, as indexed in the </span><em>Web of Science</em><span>. </span><em>Instructional design; instruction design; educational design; learning design; teaching design; ID</em><span>, etc, were the key phrases used for searching the documents, and a total of 758 analysed documents were judged relevant to the field of instructional design. The results of the study were explored according to the journal of publication; document type; year of publication; author; author affiliation; country of publication; most frequently used words and phrases; subject; language; cited by years and </span><em>h</em><span> index rating. Notable findings include the most frequently used key words and phrases (after </span><em>instructional design</em><span>, these are </span><em>cognitive load theory</em><span> and </span><em>worked examples</em><span>); regarding subject area, </span><em>education, educational research</em><span>, and </span><em>educational psychology</em><span> dominate. With regards to country of origin, 87% of authors came from only 7 countries, with countries in the Far East being poorly represented.</span>