eJournal Week 2

Analyzing Problems Last week, you completed a technique to determine the root cause of the problem that you think your instructional design will address. The technique isn’t a formal procedure in instructional design, but it should have helped reveal some key considerations that designers make during the analysis phase. Determining whether there is an instructional need is an important step to conduct before jumping into designing instruction.

A performance analysis assists the designer (you) in determining the problem, coming up with possible solutions, and determining if the problem can be solved with some form of instruction. You will have to critically analyze the situation using a variety of tactics. The 5 Whys is a way to determine whether the problem is instructional or non-instructional. Once you’ve determined the problem is instructional, you should try to obtain multiple perspectives on what knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values are needed to address the problem—the goals or outcomes of the instruction.

A needs assessment examines desired performance as compared to actual performance. If people are performing at the desired level/expectation, then there is no problem, thus no need for instruction. If there’s a gap between desired and actual performance, instruction may be a solution to the performance gap. However, the designer must analyze what instructional needs would resolve that performance gap. For example, imagine that your school principal states that teachers need to integrate more technology in the classroom. As an instructional designer, you would need to obtain a clear picture of the principal's expectations in regards to technology integration and then go about determining the actual level of technology integration that's occurring in the classroom, as well as the level of technology other skills of the teachers.

Be sure to include both a performance analysis (to determine the problem and whether or not instruction is the solution to the problem) and a needs assessment (to clarify further what should be addressed by the instruction) in your Instructional Design Document. 

Analyzing Context

After assessing need and determining whether problem is instructional or non-instructional, instructional designers formulate descriptions of the system, environment, and organization in which the learning or instruction will take place and identify resources available as well as constraints. In your eJournal entry for this week, document your thoughts on the learning context for your instructional design project. Pages 24 and 25 in the Richey, Klein & Tracey text provide more detailed information on considerations for analysis of context. You likely will have to conduct some research to gather information about the school, district, or other organization that you’re targeting with your design to inform your analysis.

Special note: Next week’s analysis will focus on Learner Characteristics. Use this week to focus on system, environment, and organization.

Since I am not yet a teacher I do not have a target group that I am currently working with. I have based all of the information for this project on my student teaching experience at the elementary level (K-5). The students I taught were lacking the rhythmic foundations needed to be able to continue their music education once they left for middle school, I decided to create a course just for this particular instance of my teaching. (Pretending I am the teacher of record for that school) The Garland ISD district in which I worked, is very musically competitive once students have reach the secondary levels. The students at my school were not going to be prepared for this level. I will use this knowledge to complete my project going forward.

eJournal Week 1

According to Ryan (1975), “A systems approach is an operational concept, referring to a scientific, systematic, and rational procedure for optimizing outcomes of an organization or structure, by implementing a set of related operations to study an existing system, solve problems, and develop new or modify existing systems” (cited in Richey, Klein, & Tracy, 1975, p. 17). What is key here is that our primary purpose in applying instructional design models or processes, such as the ADDIE model, is to solve some sort of problem. When you introduced yourself to the class, you indicated a topic or subject area for your instructional design project. For your first journal entry, I’d like you to more fully explore what problem your instructional design project will address. You’ll use a systematic process for identifying the root cause of a problem; this process is known as the 5 Whys.

1 First briefly describe your intended project. You can copy and paste it from your introduction if you wish. Then state what the problem that your design project will address is. If you’re designing a new course or workshop, the problem might simply be that the course or training doesn’t exist. If you’re modifying instruction, state why. This is your first why.

2  Then determine and state why the problem you’ve identified is occurring or why that problem is a problem—your second why.

3  Now explain why that’s occurring (the cause) or why that’s a problem (unintended or undesirable effects)—your third why.

4  Then identify a fourth and fifth why if you can.

5  Now reflect on your process. Did this technique reveal any new insights for your project? Has it changed the scope, purpose, or focus of the project? Explain how or why. 

Additional Resources

Feel free to read more on the 5 Whys technique, where it originated, how and why its used in Wikipedia or all over the web, if you wish.

1.    During my student teaching I noticed that students were not given enough time and practice on rhythm in the classroom. This is mostly due to the fact that students only come to music once a week. Because of this I feel there is a need to focus on rhythmic passages during music classes. I plan to create a course to focus on the rhythmic foundation of music.

2.    Music teachers are expected to fill their 40 minute class with activities to keep them moving and interested. There simply is just not enough time to work solely on rhythm.

3.    The problem this creates is that students do not have the correct music foundation and get behind when they move on to middle school music programs. With this six weeks rhythm focus, the teacher can focus on just rhythm then can add the activities in afterwards.

4.    This process has really helped to find the focus of this project. It has not changed my scope but it did given be a bigger picture of how this project is going to work.

Five Whys

            The five whys is interesting because it was created by a car company. It is such a simple look at a problem, then figuring out how to solve it. It makes me think of a child. Children will ask why 100 times until they find the answer they want. It’s amazing we can use something that is so simple a child uses it to solve our problems.