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Joseph Benson, instructional designer, has been tasked with creating some new instruction for first year graduate students in an M.A.
Communication program at his University. More specifically
Joseph is working with Professor Amy Zang to develop some instructional modules to teach these
first year students for a three credit hour course called “Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics”.
Amy has laid out her learning goals and objectives for the course and reviewed them with Joseph.
Joseph has determined that in order to best develop instruction for Amy based on her goals,
he will need to better understand the learners. Joseph is going to jump into the area of front end analysis that we call, “learner analysis”.
How will he go about completing this analysis?
What are the steps he should take to achieve his goal?
Let’s see some things Joseph might consider along the way.
In addition to being an instructional designer, Joseph teaches some of his own courses in instructional design.
He has a good idea of who the learners are who take his courses,
but he knows that the graduate students in the Communication program with Amy Zang are
likely going to be different from those taking instructional design courses.
How are they different?
Where does Joseph start in his analysis?
Joseph might consider starting by dropping all assumptions and
think about creating instruction that is focused around the audience rather than the content.
The first step may be asking the question of the appropriateness of the instruction.
Will this instruction be appropriate for more than one audience?
Joseph can start by identifying the “primary audience” for the instruction and then the “secondary audience”, if any.
These groups make up the “Target Population” for the instruction and
by clearly describing the two possible types of audiences will help later in the instructional process
when decisions may need to be made about focus.
Joseph can start by documenting the target audience
and noting the similarities and differences between the groups.
He’ll also need to distinguish how the “tryout learners”
or those who will be available to him while he develops the instruction
and how they are going to be different from the broader audience.
When looking at similarities and differences, there are characteristics
that can be considered “stable” and rarely change over time,
while “unstable” characteristics change with time.
Noting those characteristics can be helpful.
The instructional designer may find some value in looking at the target audience from these perspectives;
entry skills, prior knowledge, attitudes, motivation, abilities, learning preferences, and group characteristics.
With most all instruction, learners are going to be required to have already mastered some skills before engaging in new content.
The designer is going to need to identify what those entry skills are for his or her target audience.
Knowing those skills will influence the choices the designer will make later.
In addition to those entry skills, the target audience may already have some knowledge
about the topic one is preparing instruction for.
What is that prior knowledge for this audience
and how will they be able to build on that knowledge with this new instruction?
What will the learner’s attitude toward the content be?
Will this be content that they will find a great interest in or have certain expectations about?
The designer should understand the audience’s expectations for delivery of the instruction.
Motivation will play a big role in the design.
Research suggests that when learners have little motivation or interest in a topic, learning can become nearly impossible.
John Keller developed a model of different types of motivation that need to be present for successful learning.
This model became known as the ARCS model.
He suggested how the model might be used in designing effective instruction.
Joseph may be well served by reviewing Keller’s model, which includes; attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction.
Joseph will also want to make sure that he understands the target audiences educational background and abilities.
Understanding these levels will provide some insight about the learner’s abilities to cope with new and different types of instruction.
The analysis of learners should also include some understanding of the target audience’s general learning preferences.
What kind of modes of learning work best with this group, lectures, discussions, group work, and other techniques?
What is the preference for the audience?
What is that attitude towards the administration including the teacher going to be for the target audience?
Is it positive, skeptical, something else?
And finally, are there certain group characteristics for the target audience that will influence the development of the instruction?
Understanding some of the group characteristics will help develop a motivational strategy for designing the instruction later.
OK, so Joseph has an idea of what he should think about as he analyzes the learners for the instruction.
How does he collect the data?
There are a number of ways to collect data and some things Joseph might consider would be a site visit to the learner’s classrooms
or some interviews with others who work with the learners,
including the learners themselves.
Sometimes surveys can help too.
Collecting the data may be a challenging task and the instructional designer may need to rely on just a
few resources since access to the learners may be difficult if not impossible.
At the end of the day, if Joseph successfully analyzes the target audience, he will have the foundation
for different strategies to use in the instruction later.
The design should also identify the implications of the characteristics that they have identified in the analysis of the learners.
After a thorough analysis of the target audience Joseph will be on his way to developing effective instruction.
He can now take Professor Zang’s learning goals, couple those with the learner
characteristics and now look at the learning environment.
He is getting near completion of his analysis phase and almost ready to start the design phase of his process.
After a thorough analysis of the target audience Joseph will be on his way to developing effective instruction.
He can now take Professor Zang’s learning goals, couple those with the learner
characteristics and now look at the learning environment.
He is getting near completion of his analysis phase and almost ready to start the design phase of his process.