Learner and Context Analysis

Analyze your learner population. You should gather whatever information you can. Among the sources of information you might consider are formal or informal interviews with members of the population itself, formal or informal interviews with teachers, parents, and others who have dealt with the population, existing records, and others. Also, analyze the context, using interviews and observations to gather information. Unless you come up with a better way of presenting your analysis, it should be in the form of a table, as shown below.

Category		Data Source	Characteristic	Implication(s)
Learners
	Entry Behaviors
	Prior Knowledge
	Attitudes
	Motivation
	Education and Ability
	Learning Preferences
	Attitudes toward organization
	Group characteristics
Context
Performance	Support
	Physical Aspects
	Social Aspects
	Relevance
Learning	Simulate Workplace?
	Adapt to Delivery Approaches?
	Design and Delivery

 Note that a key part of this table is the Implications column. This is an addition to the procedure you will find in the Dick and Carey book. The entries here should answer the question "So what?" Try making a sentence out of the last two columns like this: "Because I know [Characteristic] about the learners, I will [Implication]." The implication should discuss some way in which the instructional design or delivery will be different because of what you know about this characteristic. An example: "Because I know that the learners all score very high on tests of verbal ability, I will design the instruction for a higher reading ability than I would otherwise, and I will design it so that it has less structure." Another useful mental exercise is to imagine a set of learners that are exactly the opposite in this characteristic of the one that you are describing. How would you design and deliver the instruction differently for the two groups.

 

© Albert L. Ingram, Ph.D. Revised: January 24, 2000
http://aingram.educ.kent.edu/IDClass/Assignments/finalchk.htm#Learner Analysis