ORIGINAL PAPER Software Engineering Design Principles Applied to Instructional Design: What can we Learn from our Sister Discipline? Nor Hafizah Adnan 1 & Albert D. Ritzhaupt 1 # Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2017 Abstract The failure of many instructional design initiatives is often attributed to poor instructional design. Current instructional design models do not provide much insight into design processes for creating e-learning instructional solutions. Given the similarities between the fields of instructional design and software engineering, instructional designers could employ the ideas and tech- niques employed in software engineering to improve their design solutions. Software engineering development and project management methodologies can be employed to develop effective e-learning solutions. Furthermore, software engineering design principles used to develop high-quality software can be applied to planning and enhancing instruction. Fundamental software design concepts, such as abstraction, modularity, reusability, compatibility, extensibility, scalability, and maintainability are all important factors that can potentially lead to the development of high quality instructional solutions. This paper explores the possibility to integrate software engineering design principles into instructional design for e-learning solutions, which not only augment the generic instructional design approach with the best practices from the field of software engineering, but also make the development process more productive and efficient. Finally, this paper illustrates how all of the software engineering design principles are interrelated and can be realized in practice to enhance the quality of instruction. Keywords Software engineering . Instructional design . Engineering design . Instructional design models Introduction There has been a claim that, Beffective teaching begins with effective planning of instruction^ (Jones and Davis 2008, p. 24). Instructional design is a systematic approach to the design of instruction and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction into plans to produce predetermined learning outcomes efficiently and effectively (Dick et al. 2009). According to Morrison et al. (2013), there is no single approach to design instruction. The design of instruction can be informed by principles drawn from different disciplines such as education- al psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, system theory, management, economics, communication, and organizational theory (Reigeluth 1999). Instead of focusing on learning theory and instructional design concepts only, instructional designers may benefit from the principles derived from the software engi- neering literature (Gibbons 2014). In this article, we present sev- eral software engineering design principles and illustrate how they can potentially improve e-learning solutions in the context of instructional design. This paper serves multiple purposes. First, the paper re- views considerations about existing instructional design models and the relationship to software engineering as well as some background information. Special emphasis is placed on agile software engineering project management and devel- opment methodologies useful to instructional design. Next, the fundamental software design principles, derived from the field of software engineering, and significant for e-learning solutions are presented. Third, given the similarities between software engineering and instructional design, this article sug- gests the integration of software design principles into instruc- tional design processes. Although such design principles are difficult to realize in practice, they form the foundation for further consideration in supporting instructional designers. Finally, the interrelationship of software design principles in the context of instructional design is described. Overall, this article focuses on the need for instructional designers to * Albert D. Ritzhaupt aritzhaupt@gmail.com 1 School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida, 2423 Norman Hall, PO BOX 117048, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA TechTrends https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-017-0238-5