The AECT Design and Development Competition

The goals for this award are to:

• improve the professional practice of design and development in adult learning and performance-improvement settings;
• promote collaboration among students, faculty, and practitioners;
• mentor promising students by leaders outside their home institutions; and,
• recognize innovative design-and-development approaches to adult learning and performance-improvement problems.

2017 Competition

Now in its 14th year, the AECT Design and Development Competition is designed for graduate student teams of two to take a realistic problem that Instructional Designers might face in business and industry and design a solution to the problem.  Judges evaluate these solutions in terms of theoretical excellence, creativity and feasibility.  The competition takes place in three phases or rounds.  

We are currently in Round 2 of the competition!

We are at the half way point of Round 2.  the six teams have submitted their proposals to our judging team.  This proposal is a more formal and and polished paper presenting their solution as described in the problem statement.  The judges will select the top three and these teams will be called finalists and will present their solutions at AECT in Jacksonville in November.  The judges will have their selections by September 15.  We can hardly wait for it! 

We want to take this time to celebrate the judges who are evaluating these proposals from the six teams.  Serving this year and in no particular order, are our judges for the 2017 year.

A special note about Dr. - she was a finalist in the competition a number of years ago when she was a graduate student and she wants to give back to the competition and help this future generation of students as a judge - bravo!

Additional Information

Specific details about the three phases are found in the "General" link at the top and bottom of this page.  Other details about the competition can be found in the additional links provided.  The are additional details about the competition in the links immediately below.  Please refer to these for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions about the competition. 

Competition Planning Committee Contact Information. 

2017 Problem Statement

2017 AECT D&D Competition Informational Webinar

Watch this webinar the learn the fundamentals about this competition. You are also welcome to download the PDF file used during this webinar.  The transcript of the audio component of the webinar is provided as well.