Journal Scope
Focus and Scope
Instructional Design • Ethics • Morality • Character • Religious Values
Journal Focus
Value-Integrated Instructional Design in Higher Education
Instructional Design and Ethical Pedagogy (IDEP) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal devoted exclusively to primary empirical research on instructional design in higher education. The central object of every manuscript must be the design, implementation, or empirical evaluation of instruction and learning within university or other higher education settings.
The instructional design investigated in IDEP must explicitly and substantively integrate ethical principles, moral values, character formation, and religious values into its objectives, learning activities, teaching strategies, learning experiences, and/or assessment practices. These dimensions must constitute an integral component of the instructional design rather than merely appearing as background discussion or supplementary variables.
Core Scope
IDEP publishes research in which instructional design is the primary research focus, not merely the educational context. The instructional design being investigated must demonstrate the deliberate integration of:
Ethics
Fairness, responsibility, integrity, dignity, justice, and ethical decision-making.
Morality
Moral reasoning, values, responsibility, and awareness of right and wrong.
Character
Integrity, discipline, responsibility, empathy, respect, honesty, and other character values.
Religious Values
Religious, spiritual, faith-based, and transcendent values embedded in teaching and learning.
Scope of Inquiry
01 · Course Instructional Design
Empirical investigation of university course designs in which ethics, morality, character formation, and religious values are intentionally embedded in learning objectives, content, activities, and assessment.
02 · Instructional Strategy Design
Primary research examining instructional strategies deliberately structured to promote academic learning together with ethical awareness, moral reasoning, character development, and religious values.
03 · Value-Integrated Learning Activities
Studies of learning activities, assignments, discussions, collaborative tasks, problem-based learning, projects, or other instructional experiences explicitly designed around ethical, moral, character, and religious dimensions.
04 · Assessment Design
Empirical research on assessment practices designed to evaluate academic learning together with ethical judgment, moral reasoning, character outcomes, and religious or spiritual values.
05 · Digital Instructional Design
Primary empirical studies of online, blended, digital, or technology-supported instructional design when ethical, moral, character, and religious dimensions are structurally integrated into the learning design.
06 · AI-Supported Instructional Design
Empirical studies of AI-supported university instruction where artificial intelligence forms part of an instructional design that explicitly incorporates ethics, morality, character development, and religious values.
Educational Context
IDEP focuses specifically on higher education. Studies should be situated in universities, colleges, institutes, academies, or equivalent tertiary education institutions and may involve undergraduate students, postgraduate students, lecturers, university courses, academic programs, or higher education learning environments.
Primary Empirical Research Only
IDEP publishes only original primary empirical research based on new data collected directly from higher education settings. Eligible approaches may include experimental, quasi-experimental, quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, classroom observation, and empirical case-study designs , provided that instructional design remains the central object of investigation.
What Counts as Instructional Design?
For IDEP, instructional design refers to the intentional organization of learning objectives, content, teaching strategies, learning activities, learner interactions, instructional environments, and assessment to facilitate learning. A manuscript is not considered within scope merely because it investigates teaching, students, technology, ethics, or religion. The study must explicitly examine how instruction is designed and how ethical, moral, character, and religious values are embedded within that design.
Outside the Journal's Scope
IDEP does not consider manuscripts primarily concerned with:
- Research and Development (R&D) or product-development research;
- development of modules, media, applications, websites, LMS platforms, instruments, learning products, or instructional models;
- Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR), scoping reviews, narrative reviews, integrative reviews, or other literature-review studies;
- bibliometric, scientometric, meta-analysis, or secondary-data studies;
- conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, or purely normative papers without primary empirical data;
- general teaching methods or educational practices where instructional design is not the central research focus;
- educational technology or artificial intelligence studies focused only on adoption, acceptance, usability, effectiveness, or technical performance;
- character education, moral education, ethics education, or religious education that does not explicitly investigate instructional design;
- instructional design studies that include ethics, morality, character, or religion only as background discussion without integrating them into the design itself;
- studies conducted primarily outside higher education contexts.
Mandatory Editorial Fit
Every manuscript submitted to Instructional Design and Ethical Pedagogy (IDEP) must satisfy all of the following requirements:
01. The manuscript reports original primary empirical research.
02. The research is situated in higher education.
03. Instructional design is the primary object of investigation.
04. The instructional design explicitly incorporates ethical principles.
05. The instructional design explicitly incorporates moral values.
06. The instructional design explicitly incorporates character formation.
07. The instructional design explicitly incorporates religious values.
IDEP Scope Formula
Higher Education + Primary Empirical Research + Instructional Design + Ethics + Morality + Character + Religious Values