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.