SDoI: Chapter 5: Analyzing Learners and Contexts

[This is the sixth in a series of posts about Dick and Carey’s The Systematic Design of Instruction. Want to read an overview and my thoughts on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 before proceeding?]

This chapter is about characterizing learners, the context in which they will be performing, and the context in which they will be learning.

Bounty Hunting School – Language Course by Stéfan

Learners

This chapter tells us that we need to know certain characteristics of the targeted learners. But what is the purpose of gathering that information? How will it affect the instruction that is later developed? If the learners do not have skills that you initially considered entry behaviors, you can directly use that information to design instruction that includes more basic skills. However, why do we need to know about gender, for example? Will knowing that learners have positive attitudes toward the content change the way that the instruction is designed? More information on this topic is apparently found in later chapters, according to p. 90:

In this chapter, we identify a set of variables that research has indicated affects learning. If you describe your learners in terms of these variables, you can modify your instructional strategy to enhance learning.

So, information on specific variables will directly impact the learning design. We just don’t yet know how they will impact it. Here are those variables, from p. 91:

1. Entry behaviors
2. Prior knowledge of the topic area
3. Attitudes toward content and potential delivery systems
4. Academic motivation
5. Educational and ability levels
6. General learning preferences
7. Attitudes toward the organization giving the instruction
8. Group characteristics

I wonder about #7, since this could be a loaded question. How can you get an honest answer? Also, I am not sure that this is relevant to, for example, college students who are studying a foreign language at a particular institution. Should the design of the instruction be changed if the students hate their university? Or if they love it?

Performance context

The listed characteristics of the performance environment (pp. 93-94) are

1. Managerial or supervisor support
2. Physical aspects of the site
3. Social aspects of the site
4. Relevance of skills to workplace

But what is the performance context for foreign language learners? Various work, school, and social settings in the foreign-language culture? A home stay? A workplace in the United States? Only the classroom? There are simply too many possibilities. My opinion is that this should be moved to the learner characteristics in this case. We cannot know how the learners plan to use their language skills unless we ask them. But will this affect the instruction that is created? Only, I think, if it affects the instructional goals.

Learning context

The listed characteristics of the learning environment (p. 95) are

1. Adaptability of site to simulate workplace
2. Adaptability for delivery approaches
3. Learning-site constraints affecting design and delivery

In universities, the instructor or instructional designer may not know what classroom space will be available or assigned, which complicates any investigation of the learning context.

The third characteristic is very important to consider if the instruction includes any technology, even that as basic as chalkboards. The classroom itself may limit what type of instruction is possible.

Evaluation and revision of the instructional analysis

Tacked onto the end of this chapter is a recommendation to have your instructional analysis evaluated by learners before proceeding to the next step.  From p. 97,

The reason we are discussing the tryout in this chapter, rather than in the last one, is that the tryout can occur at the same time the designer is conducting the learner and context analyses. Those analyses bring the designer into contact with potential learners, or recent learners, who can review the instructional analysis with the designer.

Ah, great idea! Rather than relying on your own intuitions about steps and skills and entry behaviors, you can get an informant to check out your ideas and get feedback before proceeding.

Next up: Chapter 6, Writing Performance Objectives.

SDoI: Chapter 4: Identifying Subordinate Skills and Entry Behaviors

[This is the fifth in a series of posts about Dick and Carey’s The Systematic Design of Instruction. Want to read an overview and my thoughts on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 before proceeding?]

It’s been a while (okay, more than a year) since I posted about the previous chapter, but I have not given up!

Chapter 4 is about how to further analyze an instructional goal by determining subordinate skills and entry behaviors. I found this idea interesting, so I tried it out on an example language goal: “Given information about the people involved, describe a gift-giving situation as ‘Person1 gave gift to person2’ in polite Japanese.” By information, I mean the relative ages of the people, their relationship (friends, teacher/student, parent/child, etc.), etc. Here is a simple diagram of the steps that I believe are involved.

I simplified the situation by providing a framework for the sentence where the verb and three nouns can be plugged in, rather than adding steps in which the sentence is constructed. Those steps could be added before the verb steps.

So, back to the text to learn how to analyze the subordinate skills.

On p. 54, we learn that

The hierarchical approach is used to analyze goals that are classified as intellectual or psychomotor skills.

Although this goal requires plenty of verbal information, I think that it can be usefully classified as an intellectual skill. So, I will try a hierarchical analysis.

How is hierarchical analysis done? Also on p. 54,

The hierarchical analysis technique suggested by Gagné consists of asking the question, “What must the student already know so that, with a minimal amount of instruction, this task can be learned?”

And on p. 58,

One way to proceed is to ask, “What mistake might students make if they were learning this particular subordinate skill?”

Further information is provided on pp. 58-59.

You should also ask the following questions:

1. Have I included subskills that relate to the identification of basic concepts, such as objects or object qualities? (Example: Can a tetrahedron be identified?)
2. Have I included subskills that enable students to identify abstractions by means of a definition? (Example: Can the student explain what a city is, or show what an emulsion is?)
3. Have I included subskills that will enable students to apply rules? (Example: Making sentence verbs agree with subjects, simplifying mixed fractions.)
4. Have I included subskills in the analysis that will enable students to learn how to solve problems required to demonstrate mastery of the instructional goal?

I tried to incorporate these questions into my subordinate analysis, and I used the information on creating instructional analysis diagrams on pp. 62-64 to construct the following:

Just for visual clarity, I made steps green, subskills yellow, and verbal information blue. One problem that I had with making the diagram was that my third step (“Construct the final sentence…”) requires verbal information, such as knowing the Japanese words for various pronouns and other nouns that represent the gift. But none of the examples in the book show verbal information being connected directly to a step. It is always connected to a subskill, so I am not sure if it is okay to add it to a step.

The subskills could be taken further, but I think that I have already defined some that I consider entry behaviors. In the glossary (p. 346), “entry behaviors” are defined as

Specific competencies or skills a learner must have mastered before entering a given instructional activity.

I would designate the entry behaviors for this goal as everything below and to the right of the dotted line. In other words, students should already know some regular and irregular verbs and the polite ending before learning this goal.

So, that is my attempt to apply this chapter to a very specific language goal.

One other comment on this chapter: One of the examples of a cluster analysis struck me as a terrible way to organize information. While hierarchical analysis is used for intellectual goals, cluster analysis is used for verbal information. The glossary (p. 345) defines “cluster analysis” as

A technique used with goals in the verbal information domain to identify the specific information needed to achieve the goal and the ways that information can best be organized or grouped.

So, why in the world would you organize anatomy vocabulary as lists of words, as the books shows on p. 87? Wouldn’t the best, most intuitive way to organize it be as labels on a drawing of a body?