Chapter 4: Identifying Subordinate and Entry Skills
The second step in instructional analysis: subordinate skills analysis. The authors talk about identifying each skill for this step, if there are skills omitted they will not get the desired outcome, however if skills are taught that the learner already knows they will also not get the desired outcome.
I can relate to both of these ideas. When I am learning something if skills are left out I become confused, feel stupid and eventually tune out. On the other hand if I am given too much information that I already know I will also tune out because I already have that information and in doing so may miss other key elements. There is a fine line between too much and too little.
By finding out what skills are needed and what our learner knows we can create appropriate instruction. Many times there will be a discrepancy in the prior knowledge of said learners, some know more and some know less, as a designer there will be many times when we have to teach to the middle. It would be appropriate to give those who know more, extra instruction and those who know less remedial instruction, hopefully they can help each other, but that is another topic altogether.
The hierarchical approach is basically a drilling down approach, once the designer has identified subordinate skills they ask the question Gagne created “What must the student already know so that, with a minimal amount of instruction, this task can be learned?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 60) Then this question is asked of each subordinate skill over and over until they can no longer ask the question and there you have the answer. In other words as the author states “What is it that the student must already know how to do, the absence of which would make it impossible to learn this subordinate skill?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 60) Another question the authors recommend in order to identify a subordinate skill is “What mistake might students make if they were learning this particular skill?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 64) I am assuming as a beginner designer I will be asking both questions, but once I have more experience may be able to leave out the latter question. Dr. Zheng, I will always put in the page number for my journal entries if that’s ok, just so I can go back and refer to them.
I am looking at the diagrams on page 62, I am still confused by the arched line, can you go through more diagrams with us? I do see that the arrows are a flow of skills upward to reach the goal, it’s when the lines intersect and arch I get confused.
Procedural analysis is used when intellectual or psychomotor skills are steps in the goal analysis, here the skills will be listed in a diagram from left to right, these skills may include mental or physical steps. Cluster analysis is used for verbal information. I believe cluster analysis is best served when it is necessary to memorize large groups of information, all of the countries and the continents they are on, Dr. Zheng, if I’m not right about that then please do point me in the right direction. How can the countries best be memorized and taught, perhaps by grouping them together on their continents, which also need to be learned.
Attitude goals, also know as fuzzy goals should be attacked first with the question “What must the learners do when exhibiting this attitude?” and “Why should they exhibit this attitude?”(Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 66) When creating a hierarchal analysis for attitude goals it is important to list the subskills in order to reach the goal. As we discussed in class it would be easy to brush off fuzzy goals, but these can be very important goals that can effect an entire cooperation, like attitude. It is important to ask the right question and figure out how to make it a more concrete goal that can be measured.
Last week I asked the question can a goal belong in several domains and now I have my answer, yes! When one is drilling down the goal, subordinate skills can show up from several different domains.
Diagramming is an integral part of instructional design, I will celebrate the day I can fully write and read them!
Why is instructional analysis important asks the authors? The designer can use this process not only to see what skills a learner needs to be successful, but also what skills are unnecessary. Furthermore, it is imperative that the designer has knowledge of what it is the student already knows. Therefore instructional analysis is critical in the design process.
I can relate to both of these ideas. When I am learning something if skills are left out I become confused, feel stupid and eventually tune out. On the other hand if I am given too much information that I already know I will also tune out because I already have that information and in doing so may miss other key elements. There is a fine line between too much and too little.
By finding out what skills are needed and what our learner knows we can create appropriate instruction. Many times there will be a discrepancy in the prior knowledge of said learners, some know more and some know less, as a designer there will be many times when we have to teach to the middle. It would be appropriate to give those who know more, extra instruction and those who know less remedial instruction, hopefully they can help each other, but that is another topic altogether.
The hierarchical approach is basically a drilling down approach, once the designer has identified subordinate skills they ask the question Gagne created “What must the student already know so that, with a minimal amount of instruction, this task can be learned?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 60) Then this question is asked of each subordinate skill over and over until they can no longer ask the question and there you have the answer. In other words as the author states “What is it that the student must already know how to do, the absence of which would make it impossible to learn this subordinate skill?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 60) Another question the authors recommend in order to identify a subordinate skill is “What mistake might students make if they were learning this particular skill?” (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 64) I am assuming as a beginner designer I will be asking both questions, but once I have more experience may be able to leave out the latter question. Dr. Zheng, I will always put in the page number for my journal entries if that’s ok, just so I can go back and refer to them.
I am looking at the diagrams on page 62, I am still confused by the arched line, can you go through more diagrams with us? I do see that the arrows are a flow of skills upward to reach the goal, it’s when the lines intersect and arch I get confused.
Procedural analysis is used when intellectual or psychomotor skills are steps in the goal analysis, here the skills will be listed in a diagram from left to right, these skills may include mental or physical steps. Cluster analysis is used for verbal information. I believe cluster analysis is best served when it is necessary to memorize large groups of information, all of the countries and the continents they are on, Dr. Zheng, if I’m not right about that then please do point me in the right direction. How can the countries best be memorized and taught, perhaps by grouping them together on their continents, which also need to be learned.
Attitude goals, also know as fuzzy goals should be attacked first with the question “What must the learners do when exhibiting this attitude?” and “Why should they exhibit this attitude?”(Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2009, p. 66) When creating a hierarchal analysis for attitude goals it is important to list the subskills in order to reach the goal. As we discussed in class it would be easy to brush off fuzzy goals, but these can be very important goals that can effect an entire cooperation, like attitude. It is important to ask the right question and figure out how to make it a more concrete goal that can be measured.
Last week I asked the question can a goal belong in several domains and now I have my answer, yes! When one is drilling down the goal, subordinate skills can show up from several different domains.
Diagramming is an integral part of instructional design, I will celebrate the day I can fully write and read them!
Why is instructional analysis important asks the authors? The designer can use this process not only to see what skills a learner needs to be successful, but also what skills are unnecessary. Furthermore, it is imperative that the designer has knowledge of what it is the student already knows. Therefore instructional analysis is critical in the design process.
Article: Learning by doing (Roger Schank)
The opening paragraph of our reading says that “fact based knowledge dominates traditional instruction” (Schank, Berman and Macpherson) In other words if you can regurgitate facts you are smart, but that is not the case in this world, it’s the creative thinkers the doers who are making things happen in my opinion. In a class discussion a couple of weeks ago students in our class were saying learners from China and India and various other countries are so far ahead or our learners in math and reading, etc., but the thing that occurred to me is Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Square, I could go on, they all originated in the United States, we must be doing something right. That being said I will read on to see what our authors believe.
The authors point out some major problems in the public school at this time first the teachers give the students facts, the students memorize the fact or not and then they take a test, after the test they probably forget a lot of what they’ve learned unless for some reason they have made the information meaningful to their lives. The other problem is that the student often times does not have an opportunity to apply what they have learned to anything real world. There is a quote going around on facebook, well another day went by when I didn’t use any algebra, my kids are constantly asking me why they are learning this or that. The only good answer I have is you are learning how to learn, maybe I’m right, maybe not.
Goal Based Scenarios (GBS) is based on students doing in order to learn. GBS is about learning how to do something, student should learn about things they find interesting and it should be done in a way that the students will have their memory triggered. For example, my little girl is in the 4th grade at Rowland Hall. They are studying earthquakes and fault lines and indigenous rocks of Utah, basically what lies beneath and on top. One of the field studies they will do this year is go up Little Cottonwood Canyon, they explore the shape of the canyon, it’s a V canyon so was it made from a glacier or an earthquake, they take them to the Temple Quarry up there and the children discover the granite. I know this will impact my daughter because I have 2 boys who have gone to Rowland Hall and both can tell you about the canyons and how they were formed and the local rock in the area. Something we know about learning is that learning cannot take place until the learner is ready to receive the information, therefore it is the challenge of the teacher is to prepare the learner with a desire to learn the information they need to disseminate.
Another was of learning is Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) we learn from our experiences, our past mistakes and accomplishments and outcomes. The author talks about a case which is a memory of something in particular that happened. I find it interesting that the author continues to talk about mistakes, but we can learn from accomplishments as well, is that part of CBR or is it only mistakes? When I used butter in the cookies they were really good! Either way when we use CBR we have a goal in mind, expectations and use generalizations to execute the plan.
7 Essential components to Goal Based Scenarios (GBS):
1. The Learning Goals-A clearly stated goal of what we want our students to do. Each goal falls into one of two categories
a. Content Knowledge-Findings
b. Process Knowledge-How to Execute
2. The Mission-A goal, it’s important to find a real life goal, but one the student will enjoy and relate to, and can carry over to real life.
3. The Cover Story-The cover story is what gives the students opportunities to practice the skills they need in order to reach the goal. It’s an exciting and fun story that will motivate them to apply their skills.
4. The Role-Who will the learner be? They must research and act the part to the fullest.
5. The Scenario Operations-In this section the student must do the research and be able to back it up and here they execute their role, they create a report with evidence to backup their actions.
6. Resources-The goal of GBS is ultimately for students to learn by success or by failure, however this does not mean we want the students to fail. Ultimately we want them to succeed so we make sure the resources are available to them to achieve these goals, it’s important not to trick them. If they fail hopefully they will learn from their mistakes, if they succeed they also have the ability to learn.
7. Feedback-“Feedback is presented when students are primed to learn the target domain content skills.” It is important that feedback is given when the student is ready to receive it, in this way they will index the information properly and apply it to other past knowledge. There are 3 ways to give feedback:
1. Consequence of actions-if the students make a mistake the GBS gives a negative consequence. 2. Coaches-An online coach can assist the student at the opportune time. 3. Experts can tell stories that relate to the GBS, in this way the learner can index stories that relate to their scenario.
The GBS approach reminds me of my business law class in high school. We reenacted a trial and each student played a part, lawyers, defendant, judge, etc. We did research and played our parts. It was really fun and we learned all the parts and pieces of a case. The other instance where I was able to use at least part of the GBS approach is when I took drivers ed in high school, we used simulators to drive, obstacles, wet roads, street lights, etc. were part of the experience. While this would be only one aspect of GBS it had a big impact on my driving. Whether it is a computer based or real life GBS students are given real life opportunities to try on a role, apply their knowledge and have a guide to correct them along the way. In this way the errors and successes are indexed in the brain in a way that they can be used in the real world.
The authors point out some major problems in the public school at this time first the teachers give the students facts, the students memorize the fact or not and then they take a test, after the test they probably forget a lot of what they’ve learned unless for some reason they have made the information meaningful to their lives. The other problem is that the student often times does not have an opportunity to apply what they have learned to anything real world. There is a quote going around on facebook, well another day went by when I didn’t use any algebra, my kids are constantly asking me why they are learning this or that. The only good answer I have is you are learning how to learn, maybe I’m right, maybe not.
Goal Based Scenarios (GBS) is based on students doing in order to learn. GBS is about learning how to do something, student should learn about things they find interesting and it should be done in a way that the students will have their memory triggered. For example, my little girl is in the 4th grade at Rowland Hall. They are studying earthquakes and fault lines and indigenous rocks of Utah, basically what lies beneath and on top. One of the field studies they will do this year is go up Little Cottonwood Canyon, they explore the shape of the canyon, it’s a V canyon so was it made from a glacier or an earthquake, they take them to the Temple Quarry up there and the children discover the granite. I know this will impact my daughter because I have 2 boys who have gone to Rowland Hall and both can tell you about the canyons and how they were formed and the local rock in the area. Something we know about learning is that learning cannot take place until the learner is ready to receive the information, therefore it is the challenge of the teacher is to prepare the learner with a desire to learn the information they need to disseminate.
Another was of learning is Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) we learn from our experiences, our past mistakes and accomplishments and outcomes. The author talks about a case which is a memory of something in particular that happened. I find it interesting that the author continues to talk about mistakes, but we can learn from accomplishments as well, is that part of CBR or is it only mistakes? When I used butter in the cookies they were really good! Either way when we use CBR we have a goal in mind, expectations and use generalizations to execute the plan.
7 Essential components to Goal Based Scenarios (GBS):
1. The Learning Goals-A clearly stated goal of what we want our students to do. Each goal falls into one of two categories
a. Content Knowledge-Findings
b. Process Knowledge-How to Execute
2. The Mission-A goal, it’s important to find a real life goal, but one the student will enjoy and relate to, and can carry over to real life.
3. The Cover Story-The cover story is what gives the students opportunities to practice the skills they need in order to reach the goal. It’s an exciting and fun story that will motivate them to apply their skills.
4. The Role-Who will the learner be? They must research and act the part to the fullest.
5. The Scenario Operations-In this section the student must do the research and be able to back it up and here they execute their role, they create a report with evidence to backup their actions.
6. Resources-The goal of GBS is ultimately for students to learn by success or by failure, however this does not mean we want the students to fail. Ultimately we want them to succeed so we make sure the resources are available to them to achieve these goals, it’s important not to trick them. If they fail hopefully they will learn from their mistakes, if they succeed they also have the ability to learn.
7. Feedback-“Feedback is presented when students are primed to learn the target domain content skills.” It is important that feedback is given when the student is ready to receive it, in this way they will index the information properly and apply it to other past knowledge. There are 3 ways to give feedback:
1. Consequence of actions-if the students make a mistake the GBS gives a negative consequence. 2. Coaches-An online coach can assist the student at the opportune time. 3. Experts can tell stories that relate to the GBS, in this way the learner can index stories that relate to their scenario.
The GBS approach reminds me of my business law class in high school. We reenacted a trial and each student played a part, lawyers, defendant, judge, etc. We did research and played our parts. It was really fun and we learned all the parts and pieces of a case. The other instance where I was able to use at least part of the GBS approach is when I took drivers ed in high school, we used simulators to drive, obstacles, wet roads, street lights, etc. were part of the experience. While this would be only one aspect of GBS it had a big impact on my driving. Whether it is a computer based or real life GBS students are given real life opportunities to try on a role, apply their knowledge and have a guide to correct them along the way. In this way the errors and successes are indexed in the brain in a way that they can be used in the real world.