ID Phase I Analysis--Problem, Learner, Context

Since last week we learned about instructional design model, we have stepped further into the realm of IDT practice. This week, as well, we learned about a very crucial and helpful procedure which should be prioritized before any other design work is done, and that is analysis. With my previous communication and marketing background, I've always known how important it is to conduct marketing analysis, customer survey, competitive products research and other kinds of analysis to help corporations navigate their strategies. The output of Instructional design is also a product, so naturally thorough analyses are necessary. The difference here may be that the analysis is even more important in the education field than in business as learners' time is precious. 

Two articles of Smith & Ragan(Chapter 3) and Tessmer & Richey(1997) both illustrated the importance, specific steps and models of instructional context analysis. As is put in Chapter 3 -- “Instructional designers must become clever investigators, examine the characteristics of the potential users, the learning environments, the perceived need for the instruction, and the instructional task before investing time and resources…”, Smith & Ragan compared IDT designers with "investigators" and later even as "detectives" who ought to understand not only the instructors and learners, but even the facilities, school system, and a larger community. This is far more complex a career than I expected since I thought we only need to master technologies and know about the theories (which has already been a long way to go). While continuing reading, the authors actually break down the whole work into such practical details which provide not only models and tools, but even what questions to ask. For example, mostly we analyze the context in finding various constraints to our design, in which condition, we could ask open-ended questions like "describe one or two particular instances on the job in which a specific situational condition negatively affected their performance."(Tessmer & Richey 1997)

In Chapter 4 Ragan referred to the analysis of learners. They categorized learners to such an extent that I managed to know more about myself as a learner. Different from learning theories which apply to the mass, the content mainly talked about how learners differ from each other and thus it's primary to find our target audience and understand their characteristics. All the methods sound wise and goal-oriented, nonetheless, when I read the "Aptitude" category and the involvement of IQ, I couldn't stop imagining the classification of learners in the instruction which is mainly done by machines in the future. Classification and customization, designers really need to analyze more in order to satisfy the later one, instead of resulting the former one.

References: Smith & Ragan Chapters 3, 4

Tessmer et al. 1997