Lesson 2 - Needs Assessment

Now that you've been introduced to the Dick and Carey model of instructional design, it's time to take a closer look at each of the steps in the process. As you do so you will begin to develop your own individual design project. The product that you end up with at the end of each lesson will allow you to move forward to the next step in the process. The first step in the instructional design process is to determine what it is you want the learners to do when they finish with the instruction. Generally you do this by performing some sort of a Needs Assessment, which is the first step in the Dick and Carey model (see below). If you recall, this is also the first step in the ASSURE model (Analyze Learners) as well as the first step in the Reiser and Dick model (Identifying Instructional Goals).

The Needs Assessment is undertaken to identify the goals for an instructional project. In doing so you are trying to identify the gap between the desired goals and the current status. This gap is referred to as a need (hence the term "Needs" Assessment). Burton and Merrill (1991) have summarized six types of educational needs:

1. Normative need - A discrepancy between an individual’s or group’s present state and a given norm or standard. Normative needs exist if, for example, a student's score on the SAT is lower than the national standard or average or if general education courses at a college do not meet state requirements.

2. Felt need - A felt need is an individual desire or want that an individual has to improve either his or her performance. Asking people what they want is frequently used in identifying felt needs. One, however, should be cautious in using this type of data since perceptions of possibilities, social acceptance, and availabilities as well as personal attributes may influence what people say they want. When searching for felt needs, designers must be aware of needs that are motivated by a desire other than performance improvement.

3. Expressed need or demand - A felt need becomes an expressed need when people put what they want into actions. For example, if more students sign up for an online course than the seat limit, then there may be an expressed need for more sections of the course. Expressed needs are often identified in suggestion boxes and in-house publications with a question-and-answer or suggestion column.

4. Comparative need - A discrepancy between what one group has and what another group, with similar characteristics, has. A comparative need is present when two groups with similar characteristics do not receive a similar service. College A in a given state, for instance, has a modern computer laboratory, whereas College B in the same state does not. A comparative need may thus exist.

5. Anticipated or future need - A discrepancy between what is presently available and the projected demands of the future. Undoubtedly, the identification of anticipated needs is critical in educational planning since this may help equip students with necessary knowledge and skills to deal with "what will be" rather than "what is". Identifying such needs should be part of any planned change so training can be designed prior to implementation of the change. For example, a school principal and supervisors might decide to implement a new instructional technique (e.g., cooperative learning) next year. An anticipated need is the knowledge teachers require to use the cooperative learning method effectively in a classroom.

6. Critical-incident need - Critical-incident needs emerge when failures that may be rare but have significant consequences happen. Shootings in Columbine High and other schools prompted needs for security measures to be taken in public schools as well as education on violence to be received by the public. Critical incident needs are identified by analyzing potential problems. For example, chemical plants and petroleum refineries often develop employee training programs for handling emergencies such as fires, explosions, or spills. Other critical incident needs are identified by asking "what if.' questions; for example, what would happen if the main computer or phone system failed?

Determining Goals

During the Needs Assessment the designer attempts to identify the problem, then the causes of the problem, and then identifies an array of solutions that could be implemented to solve the problem. The result of this process is one or more well-defined goals. Goals are usually stated in terms of new skills, knowledge, or attitudes that you want the learners to acquire. This includes what will learners be able to do when they complete the instruction, and the real-world context in which they will have to use these new skills. The result of Needs Assessment is a clear description of a problem, evidence of the causes of the problem, and the nature of any suggested solutions. These solutions may or may not involve the development of new instruction.

Determining your goal is an important step because it will determine what you are going to teach and what the learners are going to learn. Goals statements are usually general statements that can be broken down into more specific statements (which you will do in a later step). The goals will direct all subsequent design decisions. Think of it as the top of a great pyramid. After you determine your goals, everything else must fit under it and support it.

When determining a goal, the description of what the learners will be able to do is not complete without a description of who the learners are, the context in which the learners will use the skills (performance context), and the tools that will be available to the learners. In the end a complete goal statement should describe the following:

• The learners

• What the learners will be able to do in the performance context.

• The performance context in which the skills will be applied.

• The tools that will be available to the learners in the performance context.

As Dick and Carey state, most of us are subject matter experts in some area. If you are developing instruction in a subject area that you are already an expert in, then it is much easier to come up with goals. Of course, for many of you, a list of goals has already been identified in the form of the now-infamous Standards of Learning (SOLs). Therefore, you may already have a set of goals from which to work. However, it would behoove you to tale a close look at any SOL goals you use to make sure that they fit the notion of a clearly stated instructional goal.

At times you may encounter a goal that is not clear enough. Robert Mager has developed a procedure to help designers clarify goals that are "fuzzy", or too vague. Mager's process involves the following steps:

1. Write the goal down.

2. Identify the behaviors that learners would demonstrate to reflect their achievement of the goal. Write everything down to start.

3. Sort through the list of behaviors and select those that best represent what is meant by the unclear goal.

4. Incorporate each of the behaviors into a statement that describes what the learner will be able to do.

5. Examine the goal statement and ask yourself this: If learners achieved or demonstrated each of the performances, would you agree that they had achieved the goal? If the answer is yes, then you have clarified the goal.

Is Instruction the Answer?

Because of the improvements that instruction can make in the performance of students or employees, it is often chosen as a remedy for almost any problem that a teacher or trainer might be having. Any time expectations are not being met, someone may offer additional instruction as a solution. While instruction is an appropriate solution in some cases, other factors such as lack of motivation, lack of practice, or obstacles to success may be the cause of the poor performance. In these cases it is unlikely that additional instruction will result in improvements in performance. This is where the Needs Assessment can help out. If it turns out after the Needs Assessment that the performance problem is caused by a lack of skills, knowledge, or attitudes among the students or employees, then instruction can be developed to address these needs. If the problem stems from other factors, then additional instruction would not be the solution.

Robert Mager and Peter Pipe (1997) have described a procedure for analyzing and identifying the nature and cause of human performance problems. In their book, Analyzing Performance Problems or You Really Oughta Wanna, they provide a systematic approach to use while analyzing a problem, and provide a flowchart to demonstrate their approach. It involves a series of questions to ask yourself when faced with a performance problem. As they state in their Preface, "Solutions to problems are like keys in locks; they don't work if they don't fit. And if solutions aren't the right ones, the problem doesn't get solved." Often what people think is "the problem" isn't the problem at all.

For example, an airline executive was once flying First Class on his airline. When he ordered a glass of wine to calm his nerves, he noticed that the flight attendant served it to him in one of those normal drink cups as opposed to a wine glass. You know, the kind of cups they use to serve soda to the coach customers. However, company policy was that wine should be served in a special wine glass. He was so upset that when he returned to company headquarters he initiated the development of a training program designed to teach flight attendants which cups to use with which types of drinks. This training was developed and implemented to all flight attendants in the company at a substantial cost and time commitment. Several months later this same executive was once again flying First Class on his airline. He confidently ordered a glass of wine, and again it was served to him in a normal drink cup. Well, this infuriated the executive, who this time barked out at the flight attendant, "Don't you know you're supposed to serve wine in a wine glass and not a drink cup? Didn't you go through the training program?" The flight attendant replied, "Why yes, we all know that, but we don't have any wine glasses. All we have are drink cups."

So you see, developing instruction is not always the solution. Sometimes, there are other solutions that may not initially be apparent (such as changing drink cup suppliers). That is where the Mager and Pipe procedure comes in. This is a real easy-to-follow procedure and would be worthwhile for you to review. We have provided their flowchart and a quick-reference checklist that outlines each step in the chart. They are available as a PDF file for you to download and review. Take some time to look it over. If you are interested in learning more about their process, we urge you to check out their book. This simple checklist will get you started, but it cannot adequately cover all the details of the process.

Link to Mager Flowchart and Checklist

Example

Here's an example of a goal statement that was developed as part of a project that was designed to teach first year English students how to use the AltaVista search engine to search the Internet for information related to their research topic. This need arose because many students did not know how to effectively use the Internet to do research. While the Internet provides access to a great deal of information, students need to critically evaluate what they find to locate good scholarly sources to use when doing research on a topic. This instructional program was to present the criteria needed to help students search the Internet and then evaluate the quality of the information that they found. As a result it was hoped that they would avoid the large amount of misinformation permeating the Internet.

Goal statement: Given a research topic, first-year English students will use the Alta Vista Internet search engine to locate information related to their topic and then evaluate the quality of the sources they find to select the most worthwhile.

The appendices in the Dick and Carey book document the process of creating a unit of instruction through each of the steps in the instructional design process. It would good for you to follow along with this process as you progress through this course. Appendix A begins with an example of a problem description and goal statements.

Instructional Design Project Part One

At this point you will begin to work on your Instructional Design Project. As you learned in this lesson, the first step in the instructional design process is to determine what it is you want the learners to do when they finish with the instruction. This is determined through a needs assessment process, which then leads to a goal statement. These first two activities will make up Part One of your ID Project.

Step 1: Needs Assessment

Take some time to think about an instructional need that you can address using the instructional design process. Before engaging in a full-scale instructional design project, it is worthwhile to examine closely the suggested instructional need. To begin with, describe a general topic for which you wish to develop an instructional program. If you are a schoolteacher, then this will likely be your area of expertise. Next, briefly answer the following questions:

1. Who are the learners that you will be designing for? Include any learner characteristics that might affect the decisions you make regarding the development of an effective learning environment. These might include cognitive abilities, previous experiences, motivational interests, and personal learning styles

2. What is the instructional need you have identified? What can't the learners in Step 1 do related to your general topic that you want them to be able to do?

3. What makes you think that the need can be addressed by instruction?

Based on the above information, describe your learning need. This should just be an organized summary of what you have already described above. This summary will become the first part of your Final Report.

Step 2: Goal Description and Goal Statement

Using the suggestions given by both books, identify an instructional goal that you would like to pursue as an instructional design project. It should be related to the need you identified above. If you are a teacher, you are encouraged to use an SOL in your area of expertise. As Reiser and Dick state (1996), "it is important for you to realize that the local school, school district, and state in which you will work are likely to have identified a variety of instructional goals they will expect your students to accomplish. These instructional goals will appear in curriculum guides, teachers guides, and other planning materials prepared by local and state education agencies." If you are not a teacher, you may still choose an SOL, or identify a need in your area of work and develop goal(s) related to that. Below is a link to the Virginia SOLs. If you work outside of Virginia, your state may have similar standards of learning.

Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools

Because of the time constraints of this class, don't choose a goal that will take an entire semester to adequately cover. Note that some of the SOLs are broader than others, and some of them have sub-goals listed underneath as bulleted items. If you are interested in an SOL that has bulleted items, you might want to use one of the bulleted items as your starting point for a goal, especially if the main goal is too broad. In any event, choose something that can be covered in a short amount of time, say in a single lesson. If your goal is still to big, try to divide it up into logical major parts, then reword each part as a separate instructional goal, and select the part most suited to your interests.

Once you a general idea of what your goal is, it's time to generate a goal statement. If you are using an SOL, you will most likely already have a goal statement of some sort. However, it may still need some reworking to fit the characteristics of a worthwhile goal statement as described in Dick and Carey. To assist you in making that decision, answer the following questions related to the goal:

1. Who are the learners that you want to accomplish your goal?

2. What should the learners be able to do, perform, or accomplish?

3. In what context will they be attempting to accomplish it?

4. What tools will be available to them as they attempt to accomplish it?

5. How could you tell if they did accomplish it?

Once you have answered these questions, use the procedures outlined in Chapter 2 of Dick and Carey to write or clarify a meaningful, worthwhile goal statement that can serve as a starting point for developing a unit of instruction. If the goal is too fuzzy, use the procedure identified by Mager for clarifying fuzzy goals. When you are finished with this you should have a clearly stated instructional goal that includes the following:

• The learners - who you want to accomplish the goal.

• What the learners will be able to do.

• The performance context in which the skills will be applied.

• The tools that will be available to the learners as they attempt to accomplish the goal.

At the end of this first step in the instructional design process, you should end up with a description of your learning need and an appropriate, feasible, and clearly stated instructional goal. In the next lesson you will begin to develop an instructional analysis.