Analysis and Design

Why Analysis and Design:

Based on the article Effects of Technology Integration Education on the Attitudes of Teachers and Students by Rhonda Christensen, it discusses the importance of completing a needs assessment before beginning any design work.  Based on her research Christensen found that as teachers are better prepared to use and integrate technology in the classroom, there is greater use in the classroom, and greater buy in the from the students.  If tech does not aid in learning and buy in there is little reason to implement it.   However the author did find that this can increase the amount of teacher anxiety as student buy-in increases.  One may think that added technology would decrease anxiety, there are a lot of moving parts incorporating tech into the classroom and if one part goes down, if not adequately prepared for contingencies, the whole ship goes down.   There is also fear of what if the students don’t like it, is it going to benefit learning, or is it going to be a bigger distraction in the classroom.  Prior to implementation proper instruction on technology use needs to be tailored to the needs of the instructor.  Too often training is delivered as a cookie cutter approach with a one size fits all model.  While this may be appropriate for novice learners it is not beneficial to everyone as a whole.  Learners need to have tailored instruction to meet their individual needs.  This is easier said than done but how is this possible when having a case load of 150+ individuals:  Instructional Design.

Completing an analysis and needs assessment can greatly assist the designer in meeting the desired needs of the instructor.  It is necessary to build the foundation on which instruction will be built by determine the desired end goal and learning objectives.  Once the objectives are established in is much easier to design instruction to reach the end goal.  I am not saying that this is a start at the end and work backwards approach, but if the end goal is not clearly defined, it is not possible to determine the path that will end at the desired destination.  As instruction becomes tailored more to individual needs, the path created will be different for many individuals and blended.  The paths do not have to run parallel or perpendicular to each other, but will cross back and forth many times as students move through the material.  Designing with this in mind will reach more learners and hopefully achieve higher success and buy-in.

References

Christensen, R. (2002). Effects of Technology Integration Education on the. Journal of Research and Technology in Education, 34(4), 411-433.