Hello everyone, welcome back, this is part 2 of the learning task analysis lecture series. In this video we'll talk about identifying information processing steps and prerequisites. Going back to ADDIE, as you may already know, task analysis is a very important step within the analysis stage in instructional design. More specifically, task analysis is one of the activities of instructional analysis. Task analysis requires a set of steps to complete and we will primarily be looking at the 3rd and the 4th steps in this video. This is Smith and Ragan model analyzing the learning task is one of the last activities in the analysis phase. Here's the topic list for this video. We'll first learn about how to conduct an information processing analysis of a goal. Second, once we complete an information processing analysis, we'll conduct a prerequisite analysis. First, let's look at information processing analysis. Once you have a learning goal statement and identify the learning outcome of the goal, you're ready to conduct an information processing analysis. This particular activity is often also called as goal analysis. This is where we identify the specific steps the learner would do when performing the learning goal. So, we can determine in the information processing steps by asking a question: what are the mental or physical steps that someone must go through in order to complete the learning task? You will need to break down the goal into its constituent parts as you determine what skills must be learned in order to complete the learning task. Here, the process should be based on how would I or an expert perform a goal, not how would I teach this goal. Here are some visual examples of information processing analysis. The best way for the instructional designer to use it in analyzing a goal, really describing what a person would be doing to perform a goal in a step by step way. Let's start with the 1st example. It looks like for an individual performing the learning goals they need to perform four essential information processing steps: a step A, B, C, D and each step will later include prerequisites for getting there. The second flow chart looks slightly different because it includes an interesting step shaped like a diamond. Step C here is a decision-making step, we probably cannot directly observe, but the decision making steps are often important to performing a goal because depending on the decision, we would need to use a different sets of skills. So here in the flow chart if the decision is yes, then we would perform step D. If the decision is no, then we will need to perform steps E and F to get to the learning goals. Let's see the third example, this flowchart also looks different from the first and the second examples. As you can see in this flow chart, they are more of a list of major topics rather than procedural steps to be performed. The floor chart also includes a sub step of an information processing step and that's sometimes happen particularly your learners need more...more guidance to understand and perform the information processing step. You probably are curious how much should be included in one step and how many steps are needed for an information processing analysis. It really depends on your learner characteristics in terms of their experience, age, developmental level and so forth. A general rule suggested by scholars is that you would need about 15 steps for 1 or 2 hours of instruction. If you have less than 5, it's probably too few; if you have more than 20 it's probably too many. This particular graphic illustrates the big picture of task analysis. On the top we start with learning goals, once we have learning goals we try to identify the essential information processing steps in performing those learning goals. The steps A, B, C, and D are the identified information processing steps in this...in this picture. After that will be looking at each information processing step to identify which prerequisites skills need to be taught for each step. On the bottom there are entry level skills that we assume the learners already have before they join the instruction or training. So an information processing analysis or a goal analysis is the activities within that box. The presented question should help in the analysis process. One way to do an information processing analysis is to write a simple assessment question for the identified learning goal. You can give that problem to a subject matter expert and observe the process and ask questions. During the process you will need to identify some common steps, the shortest routes if all routes need to be identified, and simplifying conditions. You can make some notes if there are some...some factors that make the solution more complex and you do need to know both simple and complex circumstances. Now list steps and decision points for the goal and once you complete the analysis you...you share the analysis with the subject matter expert and confirm the information accuracy. And depending on the project, it can be more helpful if you can work with more than one subject matter expert and get their perspectives. Let's look at a few examples of information processing analysis. The learning goal here is to recall families of musical instruments, which is verbal information. In verbal information, designers need to determine how to organize information in logical chunks. And such organization can use various method, such as physical attributes, specific to general, general to specific, procedural, way or [INAUDIBLE] l information, chronological information, or their frequency. In this case physical attributes were the criteria for...for organization. So one has to recall brass, percussion, string, and woodwinds and so forth to be able to recall or state families of musical instruments. This is a procedural goal that teaches high school students how to properly wash dishes in a cooking class. As you can see the flow chart shows pretty sequential steps to reach the goal. And this is a problem solving goal, which is learning how to plan a student research conference. As you can see there are many important information processing steps and sub steps for a successful conference. Here are some tips for intellectual skills and psychomotor skills goals. Literally analyze the steps to be performed. For verbal information goal use a list of the major topics to be learned. For attitudinal goal either approach can be used. Moving on to the prerequisites analysis will be looking at prerequisites of each information processing step. In later will be using this information to compose performance or what some people call learning objectives. Once again the prerequisite analysis is to identify subordinate skills of each information processing step. So for each step from the information processing analysis ask questions such as what must learn or speed will to do, achieve, and learn each task or step. What would learners have to know in order to learn to do the first step, then the second step, and the third step, et cetera in performing that goal. What mistakes my learners make if they were learning those particular skills? What must learners do when exhibiting this particular attitude? Why should learner make a particular choice? And sometimes people get confused about sub steps from information processing analysis and subordinate skills from prerequisite analysis. Can you think about the potential difference between these two and respond to the in-video question: How do you distinguish sub steps from an information processing step? And subordinate skills from a prerequisite analysis? Information processing steps and sub steps, those are the activities that an expert would describe as important steps when they perform the task. However, the subordinate skills or prerequisites, they're not necessarily identifying an expert because they learned those things long time ago, they don't need to think about it or remember those information when they describe the process, but they're important skills and knowledge for our students, our...our participants and they need to learn those skills and knowledge before being able to perform those steps in the goal. When conducting a prerequisite analysis, you do need to consider the sequence of objectives such as easy to complex, as well as the types of learning, particularly for intellectual skills as they have a hierarchical structure. Without knowing discrimination, concepts cannot be learned, without concepts rules and principles cannot be learned. Please be sure to include tools and equipment needed, any safety concerns about the task, critical attitudes in performing the task, knowledge of location, and people skills necessary to complete a step as those can be important subordinate skills in performing information processing steps and the learning goals. Here is an example, this is a flow chart of an information processing analysis for conducting various analysis activities for instructional design. By now, this graphical illustration should make sense to you, so here the learning goal is to conduct analysis for instructional design. For the sake of an example for this lecture, I have included only 5 information processing steps. Conducting analysis for instructional design involves, without a doubt, it's intellectual skills, particularly a problem solving goal. If you recall, the hierarchical structure of intellectual skills, this image, although this is quite simplified due to this space limit, can help our understanding. So if the learning goal is a problem solving in nature, for an individual to be able to achieve the goal there are subordinate rules, concepts, and discriminations that need to be acquired to be able to perform each step, as well as the goal. So going back to our example, lets suppose that we will be conducting a prerequisite analysis on the first information processing step, which is conducting a needs assessment. Once again, due to the space limit, this is a quite simplified flow chart, probably missing many subordinate skills. Yet, this for char shows the subordinate skills that need to be taught for an individual to perform a needs assessment. Particularly focusing on the design...designing instruments for the data collection aspect. During the prerequisite analysis, another important thing that you need to decide is what not to include in the instruction. Those are called entry level skills that you believe the learners must have before coming to the instruction. This can be determined based on the organizational needs as well as findings from the learner analysis. Sometimes you can run a quick pretest to make sure that your decision on the entry level skills. For example, this flow chart shows that a unit will include the learning of intellectual skills, attitudes, and psychomotor skills, but, subordinate declarative knowledge will be excluded from the instruction as it is classified as entry skills that learners must have before joining the instruction. Finishing up the lecture, let's look at this information together. Once again, in most cases, instructional designers are not subject matter experts, so you may find that you have difficulty knowing exactly how many steps should be included. As I have mentioned earlier, five to fifteen would be good for one or two hours of instruction, if you have less than 5 steps you probably need more, if you have more than 20 you might want to revisit those steps. Depending on the type of a goal or step, the prerequisite analysis can be hierarchical analysis or word cluster analysis. For intellectual skills and psychomotor skills we tend to use hierarchical analysis. For verbal information, cluster analysis is more widely used and depending on the nature of the attitude either approach can be used. Finally, consider a combination of learning domains or outcomes when analyzing tasks. In particular, attitude goals are about helping learners to choose to perform either a psychomotor or intellectual skills that is newly learned from the instruction. Thank you all and please refer to the references at the end of the lecture for more study on this topic.
