Why interactive learning environments can have it all: resolving design conflicts between competing goals.

Designing interactive learning environments (ILEs; e.g., intelligent tutoring systems, educational games, etc.) is a challenging interdisciplinary process that needs to satisfy multiple stakeholders. ILEs need to function in real educational settings (e.g., schools) in which a number of goals interact. Several instructional design methodologies exist to help developers address these goals. However, they often lead to conflicting recommendations. Due to the lack of an established methodology to resolve such conflicts, developers of ILEs have to rely on ad-hoc solutions. We present a principled methodology to resolve such conflicts. We build on a well-established design process for creating Cognitive Tutors, a highly effective type of ILE. We extend this process by integrating methods from multiple disciplines to resolve design conflicts. We illustrate our methodology's effectiveness by describing the iterative development of the Fractions Tutor, which has proven to be effective in classroom studies with 3,000 4th-6th graders.