Task analysis methods and applications

¶ … Instructional Design is where the material that is to be conveyed is determined and broken down into more manageable units for the learner. To accomplish this part of the design implementation. The tasks will have to be classified to determine the types of learning required. The individual tasks have to be identified and prioritized. Finally, the components of the tasks and the sequence will have to be determined ("Techniques of Analysis," 2000).

To begin with the educator has to be confident and clear on the goals and objectives to be taught. The objective should be something that can be clearly stated and will increase the knowledge of the students (Scott, 2001). After this is determined, the teacher will need to analyze the nature of the learning task (Scott, 2001). In other words, the teacher will have to figure out what kind of learning will need to take place in order for students to reach their goal. There are several available models to assist teachers while doing this such as Gagne's "Five Types of Learning," Bloom's Taxonomy, and Wiggins & McTighe's Backward Design (Scott, 2001). All of these methods lay out a way to analyze what will be taught and determine the type of learning needed. Regardless of the method used, the tasks will probably include lower level learning such as the memorization of facts to higher level skills such as synthesis.

Next the tasks that the students will need to complete in order to successfully gain the knowledge have to be identified ("Techniques of Analysis," 2000). This is where the actual breakdown of the information occurs which is the whole point of instructional design. The teacher will need to divide the information into manageable units so that the students can reach the goal. In this step which is also known as information processing analysis (Scott, 2001), the teacher will need to rely on his or her knowledge of the learners to be taught. The needs assessment and learner analysis will have to have been completed so that the teacher knows how well students can manage units of information and what kind of pre-requisite knowledge the students can be expected to possess. If the teacher believes that something there is missing, then he or she will have to make some of the pre-requisite knowledge part of the objective to be achieved (Scott, 2001).

Prioritizing and sequencing the information now becomes the important task for the teacher ("Techniques of Analysis," 2000). In order to process the information, students need it to be presented in a logical manner which includes ranking what is most vital to least vital. Although the teacher may not specifically state this to the students, the teacher should be aware of which tasks the students must master completely vs. other tasks that are secondary. Sequencing also plays an important part in a student's acquisition of information. If looked at from a Constructivist point-of-view, the students need to build their knowledge upon existing knowledge. Some of the existing knowledge they may already possess due to prior learning; however, in order to really master a new skill, the sequence of the new information needs to be presented in a way that allows students to build up their skills through a series of steps.