Instructional Analysis: Analyzing the Learners

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Instructional AnalysisAnalyzing the Learners

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An Overview of Learner Analysis

• The designers had not done their homework in
  analyzing the characteristics of the learners
  that they anticipated using the instruction,
  usually termed the target audience or target
  population.
• A common error resulting from failure to analyze
  the characteristics of an audience is assuming
  that all learners are alike.

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Similarities and Differences Between Learners

• There is a finite and manageable array of human
  characteristics that are useful to instructional
  designers.
• We can consider two broad types of human
  characteristicsindividual differences among
  people and similarities among people.
• Individual differences are aspects of human form,
  function, and experience about which people are
  more characterized by their variation than by
  their sameness.
• Similarities are aspects that are characterized
  by a relative sameness among people rather than
  differences.

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Four Categories of Learner Characteristics

• Stable similaritiessimilarities among people
  that are relatively unchanging over time.
• For instructional designers, knowledge of the
  characteristics of this sort of learning and
  conditions for its attainment is not particularly
  important, since this knowledge represents
  learning only in a narrow, technical sense.

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Four Categories of Learner Characteristics

• Stable Differencesstable over time. factors that
  among individual learners remain relatively.
• Designers of instruction can accommodate these
  factors by either (1)making sure that a single
  insturctional treatment can accommodate learners
  across the range of differences or (2)creating
  several instructional treatments, each of which
  is adjusted to a narrowed range of
  characteristics.

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Four Categories of Learner Characteristics

• Changing Similarities
• A characteristic that changes over time but that
  we share as a similarity among us.
• More relevant characteristics in the changing
  similarity category can be seen in development
  processes.
• People are continuously changing in their
  development, but the process or dynamics of
  development is more or less the same for
  everyone.

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Four Categories of Learner Characteristics

• Changing Differences
• The many differences of people that change over
  time include physical features such as weight,
  strength, stamina, and details of appearance.
• There are several areas of changing differences
  for which a target audience should be
  analyzedvalues and beliefs, personality states.
  Developmental stages. And levels of prior
  knowledge.

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Stable similarities

• Sensory capacities
• Although people vary in their eyesight, hearing,
  tactile sensitivity, human sensory capacities and
  perceptual responses are more alike than they are
  different.
• Information processing
• Capabilities and limits in the processing of
  information that are part of being human are
  found that do not vary with intelligence, college
  major, or even much with age.

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Stable similarities

• Types of learning
• Although it is not typical to think of the types
  of learning as a human characteristic, it is a
  fundamental fact that people are more or less
  alike in how they acquire different sorts of
  learnings.
• These conditions of learning, which are
  themselves a similarity among people, do not vary
  between people, or even between subject areas.
• The similarity in the conditions for attainment
  of different types of learning is a fundamental
  building block for instructional design.

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Stable Differences

• Intelligence quotient
• I.Q. is best defined as an aptitude for school
  learning.
• I.Q. scores can help a designer make inferences
  about a number of factors that are related to
  learning from instruction, including cognitive
  strategies available and amount of general prior
  knowledge available and amount of general prior
  knowledge available to build upon.

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Stable Differences

• I.Q. indices may also help predict which
  students will
• (1)need more/fewer examples
• (2)be able to interpret analogies
• (3)require more/less learning time
• (4)need more/less practice
• (5)have positive/negative attitudes toward
  learning
• (6)persevere in learning for short/long periods
  of time

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Stable Differences

• Cognitive styles
• Another type of stable individual difference can
  be seen in the ways that people receive and
  process information.
• These differences are variously called cognitive
  styles, cognitive controls, cognitive tempo, and
  perceptual styles.
• Cognitive styles are useful to instructional
  designers because they provide information about
  individual differences from a cognitive and
  information-processing standpoint.

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Stable Differences

• Psychosocial traits
• Three personality characteristics can also be
  viewed as stable differences among learnerstrait
  anxiety, trait locus of control, and academic
  self-concept.
• A trait characteristic is a characteristic
  that tends to be stable over time.
• Locus of control is expressed as varying
  tendencies to be internal or external in ones
  perceptions of the primary source of influence in
  life events.
• After a surprisingly short time in schooling,
  learners have developed a generalized image of
  themselves as learners.
• Gender, ethnicity, and racial group

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Changing Similarities

• Intellectual development
• Piaget saw intellectual development as a process
  as being the same for everyone.
• He described development as an essentially
  adaptive process involving the interplay of two
  processesassimilation and accommodation.
• Language development
• Chomskys theory holds that a propensity or
  talent for the structure of language is in a
  sense wired in to human brains.

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Changing Similarities

• Psychosocial and personality development
• If we look at the dynamics or change processes
  that major personality theories propose, we see
  ways in which people change that lend some degree
  of predictability to their behavior.
• Perhaps the most commonly applied of these
  theories in training settings is Maslows
  hierarchy of needs.

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Changing Differences

• Developmental states
• Although individuals in a target audience,
  particularly if they are of similar age, will
  tend to be at a similar developmental stage, it
  is quite possible that learners may fall into two
  or even more stages.
• The stages of intellectual development as
  identified by Piaget, which reflect an increasing
  capacity to engage in certain kinds of abstract
  thought.
• (1) sensorimotor period
• (2) peoperational stage
• (3) concrete-operation stage
• (4) formal-operational stage

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Changing Differences

• Erikson(1968) described an eight-stage model of
  psychosocial development. He described each stage
  in terms of the psychosocial crisis that must be
  dealt with during this period
• (1) Trust versus Mistrust
• (2) Autonomy versus Shame
• (3) Initiative versus Guilt
• (4) Competence versus Inferiority
• (5) Identity versus Identity Confusion
• (6) Intimacy versus Isolation
• (7) Generativity versus Stagnation
• (8) Integrity versus Despair

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Specific Prior Learning

• The most important factor for a designer to
  consider about the audience is specific prior
  learning.
• The more designers know about the relevant
  knowledge and skills that the learners already
  have, the more effective and efficient they can
  make the instruction.

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An Outline of Learner Characteristics

• The following list contains the major
  characteristics that should be used in a target
  audience description.
• (1)Cognitive Characteristics
• (2)Physiological Characteristics
• (3)Affective Characteristics
• (4)Social Characteristics
• Information on learner characteristics may help
  the designer to create effective, efficient, and
  interesting instructional materials.

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Assessing Learning Characteristics

• How can a designer obtain information about
  learners whom he has never met?
• (1) Interview teachers, trainers, and other
  educators who work with
• the target audience.
• (2) Interview and/or observe members of the
  target audience.
• (3) Have members of the target audience complete
  surveys that
• provide information about their
  backgrounds and interests.
• (4) Have members of the target audience complete
  assessment
• instruments.
• (5) Examine job descriptions and personnel
  profiles of organization.
• (6) Read texts and articles about particular age
  groups and
• developmental levels
• (7) Read texts and articles that discuss the
  interests and motivations
• of individuals with particular
  socioeconomic, ethnic, or racial
• backgrounds.

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Implications of Learner Characteristics for Design

• A careful consideration of the general
  characteristics of the target audience may be
  what elevates a mundane segment of instruction
  into compelling, imaginative, and memorable
  instruction.
• Following is a beginning list of instructional
  strategy factors that are directly related to
  learner characteristics.
• speed of presentation
• number of successful experiences learners should
  have in practice
• Types of statements to convince students of the
  relevancy of the instruction