Instructional Analysis

EDUA 6377 - Instructional Design

As educators, one of our primary goals is to help our students learn and succeed. To do this, we need to have a clear understanding of what we want our students to achieve and how we can help them achieve it. This is where instructional analysis comes in.

Smith and Ragan (1999), in the chapter "Instructional Analysis: Analyzing the Learning Context," suggest analyzing the learning systems sufficiently, utilizing what they refer to as the "front-end analysis." Smith and Ragan (1999) also describe that during the front-end analysis, designers analyze three basic components: the instructional context, the prospective learners, and the learning task. In a rush to get their end product out, developers, as postulated by Smith and Ragan (1999), take shortcuts by not doing a complete front-end analysis, or if teachers, because they have tons of work to prepare with little planning time, end up with these first-try scenarios which take a great deal of time and invested money resulting in (1) Unacceptable to teachers/trainers, (2) Not suitable for available equipment or (3) Not capable of meeting a real instructional need. For the time when these are the results, the instructions are not completed, either timely or as per what was the intended outcome.

To analyze the learning environment, Smith and Ragan (1999) created an instructional process model used by students and professionals in the field of instructional technology with a special focus on the cognitive psychology base of the ID process. Raible (2020) cites that Smith and Ragan's model has three phases: analyzing the learning context (learning environment), generating instructional strategies (learners), and formative and summative evaluation (learning tasks). He further ensures that these three phases provide the conceptual framework for the eight steps that comprise their ID process. These include analyzing the learning context, analyzing the learners, analyzing the learning task, assessing learner performance, developing instructional strategies, producing instruction, conducting evaluation, and revising instruction.

Raible (2020), in their article "Introduction to Instructional Design," cites Smith and Ragan's model that analyzing the learning context involves a two-part procedure: 1) substantiation of a need for instruction to help learners reach learning goals and 2) preparation of a description of the learning environment in which the instruction will be used. Smith and Ragan suggest analyzing the learner's described procedures for describing the stable and changing characteristics of the intended learner audience.

The Smith and Ragan model also indicates that analyzing the learning task describes procedures for recognizing and writing appropriate instructional goals. There is a need to assess learner performance, which describes procedures for identifying several possible assessment items that are valid assessments of objectives for various types of learning—developing instructional strategies for organizing and managing instruction. Producing instruction provides strategies for translating previous decisions and specifications into instructional materials. Raible (2020) suggests that production is followed by formative and summative evaluation. Smith and Ragan offer procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of the instructional materials both during development and after implementation. Lastly, revising instruction offers procedures for modifying the proposed instruction. Although this description suggests that the process is highly linear, Smith and Ragan caution that circumstances often require concurrent attention to several steps in their model.

Finally, Raible concludes that the Smith and Ragan model reflects their philosophy that applying a systematic, problem-solving process can result in effective, learner-centered instruction. Their model is solid in developing specific instructional strategies, a common weakness of many other Instructional Design models.

References

Raible, J. (2020). Instructional design models. Pressbooks. https://pressbooks.pub/itec51602/chapter/instructional-design-models-v2/

Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional Analysis: Analyzing the Learning Context. Prentice-Hall, Inc.