Front-End or Needs Analysis

1. Front-End or Needs Analysis

2. Project Beginning • Your project will begin with analyzing the need for an instructional intervention, given an existing performance that is deficient, or a new skill or knowledge that needs to be taught. • The first step will be to take a close look at what the expected performance is and how current performance is not matching it for any number of reasons.

3. Review • Before we begin exploring front-end or needs analysis, take a moment to review the instructional design process as presented in the next eight slides entitled “Project Process.”

4. Project Process: Report #1, Due Week 5 • After performing a needs analysis, for which you will be given some format guidelines, you will proceed through the steps in the D & C text. • The second step will be goal analysis where you identify what exactly the instructional intervention will accomplish.

5. Project Process: Report #1 • Once having determined the goal, you will undertake a detailed analysis of the task or tasks involved down to the sub-task level. • Having completed a task analysis, you will conduct an analysis of the learners, the target population. • You will then stop to take a breath and review learning theories you have learned and how they might apply in your instructional design.

6. Project Process: Report #2, Due Week 9 • Now having identified the need, the tasks, the learners, some learning theories and different types of knowledge, you will get down to the serious task of writing objectives for your instructional intervention. • Then, having identified objectives, you will design assessments that will measure attainment of those objectives.

7. Project Process: Report #2 • With the objectives and assessments in hand, you now look at how to attain those objectives through your selection of instructional strategies. • Sometimes course work is not the solution to performance deficiencies nor is it the only solution. We will look at job aids as another possibility to enhance performance.

8. Project Process • Major considerations in selecting and writing instructional design include the diversity of learners in your population. Here we will tap into learning styles and intelligences considerations.

9. Project Process: Report #3, Due Week 14 • It is time to outline your instructional strategies, including the delivery medium, the division of content into manageable units, strategies for meeting diverse needs, and levels of stimulation appropriate to the population and the tasks.

10. Project Process • Having designed and developed the instructional intervention and/or job aid you now want to see if it is accurate and if it works. • You will design formative evaluation strategies that will include subject matter experts and target population members.

11. E-Presentation, Due Week 15 • Even though you have shared the progress of your project with your small groups and with your class, this will be the time to put it all together in a presentation. It can take the form of an Inspiration-generated storyboard with accompanying text or any other innovative idea that will communicate the entire project to your instructors and class.

12. Front-end or Needs Analysis: The Why, When, What, How “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

13. Front-End or Needs Analysis • When a standard for skills and/or knowledge is not being met. • The cause of the deficiency can be human or nonhuman, may be in the cognitive, affective or psychomotor domain, and may consist of procedural, declarative or conditional knowledge. • The solution may be in any number of products or processes including job aids, coursework, practice, motivation, equipment, supervision and so on.

14. Needs Analysis: Why • Two ends of a project: Needs analysis at the beginning and formative assessment at the end are the two single most important steps in instructional design and development. • A needs analysis seeks to identify existing skills and knowledge and then identify necessary, missing skills and knowledge.

15. Needs Analysis: When • A needs analysis (NA) is conducted in response to an existing or anticipated deficiency. • An NA typically results from a request to a curriculum designer, an instructional technologist, a teacher, or a subject matter expert. • The NA originates with a perceived need for performance improvement.

16. Needs Analysis: What • When there is a difference between the actuals and optimals, there is a need. • Mastery – Actual = Deficiency

17. Needs Analysis: How • Review of documentation of optimals • Review of output/product • Interviews: performer, supervisor, SME • Observations of performers • Small group discussions • Focus groups

18. Review Documentation • Advantages: When you review the documentation for a performance, for example, a teacher’s edition of a textbook, you can identify mastery. • Constraints: Documentation does not tell you how the skills/knowledge were actually taught. • Methods: Read, read, interview subject matter experts who wrote documentation.

19. Review Output • Advantages: When you look at the product output, for example, a math test, you can see what learners have mastered and not mastered. • Constraints: You cannot always identify whether learners are deficient in all or part of the process. • Methods: Item analysis and comparison to standards.

20. Collect Performer Data • Advantages: You will interview the actual learners/performers to determine how they are performing. • Constraints: Sometimes performers do not have a clear or accurate picture of what they can or cannot do. • Methods: Observe, interview, talk to those review output.

21. Collect Supervisor or Administrator Data • Advantages: They are with the performers most probably on a daily basis and are supervising them. • Constraints: Administrators or supervisors may not know the detail of a performance on a performer level. • Methods: Interviews

22. Collect SME Data • Advantages: Subject matter experts know the performance to mastery. • Constraints: Because they are master performers, they may forget some of the developmental detail they have already mastered. You must keep asking, “How do you do that?” • Methods: Interviews, observations, documentation review.

23. Output of a Needs Analysis • Report: Scope and perceived causes of performance problem; description of mastery performance • Recommendation/Plan of Action: How do you suggest this deficiency be addressed? Remember, instruction may not be the only solution.

24. Steps • Identify and describe in detail, the performance that appears to be deficient. • Document the mastery level of this performance. • Identify the cause(s) of the deficiency. • Recommend a plan or solution.