Do the Analysis

After you have a high quality instructional goal, the next step is to analyze it into its constituents parts: facts, concepts, skills, strategies, and so on. If the goal is one that demands that the learners do something that shows they have attained it, often the first step is to break down that task into four to seven major steps. 

We will do some examples of this process in class. Here, let's take just one: preparing and delivering a persuasive speech. There is no one "right" way to analyze this task, as there might be with simpler or less ambiguous ones. However, one way to look at it is as having a few major steps: Researching, Writing, Delivering, Evaluating. Don't worry; yours may be different without being "wrong."

In turn each of these major steps can be further analyzed into a small number of steps, which may then be further analyzed themselves. For example, a particular speech teacher might analyze "Writing" into the substeps of writing the introduction, writing the body, writing the conclusion, and preparing the graphics. A different teacher might divide the task in other ways.

The point here is that in an instructional analysis one approach is to divide the goal into a manageable number of steps, then divide those in turn, and so on. Of course, this process could go on for quite a while, describing smaller and smaller tasks, skills, pieces of knowledge, whatever. Where do you stop? Again, it can be more art than science (or technology) but if you divide a substep into steps that you are certain can already be done by your learner audience, that is probably a good place to stop. These substeps will then be your prerequisite skills for the instruction.

There are several ways to do an instructional analysis, depending mostly on the kind of task you have. A procedural analysis breaks down the task into a series of steps performed in order. Sometimes there are decision points where the procedure can branch in one direction or another. 

A second type is a hierarchical analysis, in which the order of the components does not matter so much. Instead, you progressively break down the components of the task into subcomponents, then break down those into their constituents, and so forth. The parts of a component can be subskills or concepts. The important point is that you need to specify exactly what all those components are.

Perhaps the most common instructional analysis process combines procedural and hierarchical techniques. With many tasks some of the components have to be done in order while others do not. At the same time, the steps in a procedure may require further analysis to ensure that you understand them completely.

If you are analyzing verbal information, then these techniques might not work. In this case you probably need to list the information that the learners need to know and organize it in some what, such as in an outline.