Session 3

1. What is the purpose of the Analysis phase of the Instructional Design Process?

The purpose of the analysis is to give the designer what needs to be taught in the training you are planning to create. It helps answer the questions who, what, and how. This means it helps the designer find out who the product is for and what are they like, what it needs to teach, and how you know it has been successfully taught. Some of the time this step is overlooked because some designers are the SME of the project and believes they know this part of the process. This is also overlooked because of time constraints or just the reason that they want to get to the design part of the project and finish the process.

2. According to the instructor, what are the three big questions the analysis must address?

The three big questions the analysis answers is who, what, and how. The who refers to who the product is designed to teach, their characteristics and preferences. The what pertains to what your product is designed to teach, and the how is how will you know the project was successful.

3. According to the instructor what are the three main types of procedures used in the analysis? Please give an example for each category.

The three main types of procedures used in analysis are people items, mining the literature base, and document recovery. People items refer to any information that involves people such as surveys and focus groups. Mining literature base is where one looks for research and material in the field the project is designed for. Document recovery includes artifacts related to the topic of the project, such as texts and prior teaching materials.

4. What are some differences between the information the chapter presents about the analysis phase and the information provided by the instructor?

The information the instructor provided is split into three sections, people items, mining literature base, and document recovery. In this particular chapter of the book, it mainly discussed the people items of analysis more than the other two areas. It discussed in depth the different types of analysis including task analysis, observation, focus groups, and many others.

5. Case study: You are asked to develop an online training module to teach new janitorial staff how to use the floor buffing machine. Explain how you will do your analysis. Be sure to specify what type of analysis procedures you will use and why.

First thing I would do is I would request or require a manual or an SME to find out how to operate that particular machine. Depending on the amount of time and resources I have, I would use a SME, or if one was not available then a manual and access to one would have to do. Second I would interview the staff already using the machine and ask for any shortcuts or techniques they would recommend anyone new to the machine would need to know. These would be my first analysis procedure because first of all I would need to know somethings such as terminology, parts of the machine, and I would need to have a SME, or manual, in order to know how to operate the floor buffer if I were to develop an online training for this machine. The interviewing of staff already using the machine would assist in giving me insite and knowledge of what is expected for the new employees to know how to use the equipment in question.

6. Case study: You are asked to develop a video training module to orient new employees in a medium sized family restaurant. Explain how you will do your analysis. Be sure to specify what type of analysis procedures you will use and why.

First I would ask the person wanting the training module what are the tasks they are wanting new employees to learn and gather an idea of what tasks I would need to include in the training. Then I would observe the workers (preferably workers that perform the task well) doing the tasks in question, then interview the workers and ask them questions about the tasks and questions such as, what would a new employee need to know to accomplish the task? Then I would shift through all the questions and keep what might be important and throw and take out any personal opinions I got from the employees I questioned. From there, I would create a list of tasks and any knowledge needed to perform the tasks and show them to the manager or owner who wanted the training created to review the work and add anything I might have missed.