Conducting a Goal Analysis
Instructional Analysis
The instructional analysis is a set of procedures that identifies the relevant steps for performing a goal and the skills that must be achieved in order to learn some higher-level skill (subordinate skills) required for a student to achieve the goal. The primary purpose of instructional analysis is to identify the skills and knowledge that should be included in the instruction.
The first phase in instructional analysis has two major steps. The first step is to determine which domain of learning the goal is classified as and second step is to perform the goal analysis.
Step 1: Classify Goal into Gagne's Five Domains of Learning
Verbal information goals contain verbs such as state, list, or describe and require the learner to provide specific responses to relatively specific questions.
Intellectual skills are skills that require the learner to do some cognitive activity. There are 4 common types of intellectual skills including discriminations, learning concepts, applying rules, and solving problems.
- Discriminations are primarily simple, low-level learning; know whether things are the same or different.
- Learning concepts refers to being able to identify examples as being members of a certain classification (ex: baseball equipment).
- Rules are produced when concepts are combined; the learner must follow a series of steps to produce the correct answer.
- Problem solving is the highest level of intellectual skill. There are two types of problems: well-structured problems (variety of concepts and rules that have one correct answer) and ill-structured problems (one correct answer is not readily available).
Psychomotor skills involve the coordination of mental and physical activity.
Attitudes are described as the tendency to make particular choices or decisions. Attitude goals are usually long-term and will most likely not be achieved by the end of the instruction.
Cognitive strategies are the metaprocesses that we use to manage our thinking about things and manage our own learning.
Step 2: Goal Analysis
Goal analysis is the visual display of the specific steps the learner would do when performing the instructional goal. The amount of instruction required to teach an instructional goal will vary from goal to goal. Therefore the goal analysis will differ from goal to goal.
Goal analysis for intellectual, psychomotor skills, and most attitudes, include the analysis of the steps to be performed by the learner. The analysis of verbal information is done by listing the major topics to be learned in a chronological order or by other inherent relationships.
I found this video to be helpful to explain goal analysis.
In public health, the majority of outcome/learning goals are attitude goals. The goals are generally to increase or decrease a certain health behavior (i.e. decrease tobacco use or increase the number of fruits and vegetables consumed). The frustrating thing about being a health educator/working in public health is that behavior change is hard and we often don't know whether what we taught actually had an impact on the change because of the length of time it could take to actually change a behavior.
I seem to be getting confused about what an outcome goal versus an instruction goal is. Are they on in the same or are they different? In my world we have goals that we strive to meet that are based on data and those same goals could also be used as instructional goals.
I feel like sometimes I have to really try hard to relate to the reading and to other classmates, but I am hopeful that things will get better.
I seem to be getting confused about what an outcome goal versus an instruction goal is. Are they on in the same or are they different? In my world we have goals that we strive to meet that are based on data and those same goals could also be used as instructional goals.
I feel like sometimes I have to really try hard to relate to the reading and to other classmates, but I am hopeful that things will get better.