Needs analysis and technology review

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Needs analysis and technology review

• early activities in Embedding Learning
  Technologies

Stephen BostockAdvisor for Technology and
LearningKeele Universitys.j.bostock_at_keele.ac.uk
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Summary of the analysis phase

• Overview
• Needs Analysis
• Reviewing a learning technologySWOT/B analysis
• Cost considerations
• Summarise as a Statement of Purpose
• Continuing professional development plan

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Specialist outcomes for ELT

• Conducted a review of CIT in learning and
  teaching and shown an understanding of the
  educational processes
• Analysed opportunities and constraints in using
  CIT and selected CIT appropriate to the
  learning situation
• Designed a learning resource, programme or
  activity to integrate appropriate CIT
• Implemented a developed strategy
• Evaluated the impact of the interventions
• Disseminated and embedded the findings of the
  evaluation

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Rough stages of projects

• IT project
• 1. Feasibility
• 2. Analysis of requirements
• 3. Design
• 4. Build and test
• 5. Installation maintenance
• 6. Evaluation

• ELT project
• 1. (Initiation)
• 2. Analysis
• IT review
• Selection of LT
• 3. Design
• 4. (Build and test)
• 5. Implementation with students or clients
• 6. Evaluation
• 7. Disseminated

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Time dependency

• Initiation
• Analysis of requirements, review of solutions,
  selection
• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

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Awareness of learning technology and initiation
of project
Analysed opportunities and constraints in using
CIT- understand the problem
Conducted a review of CIT in learning and
teaching and shown an understanding of the
educational processes - generate solutions
Selected CIT appropriate to the learning
situation the first design decision
Write a statement of purpose
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Developmental Outcomes

• Identified their own professional development
  goals, directions or priorities
• Planned for their initial and/or continuing
  professional development
• Undertaken appropriate development activities
• Reviewed their development and their practice,
  and the relations between them
• (could map onto the project stages)

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Project initiation

• Ongoing awareness of learning technology
• A project, prompted by
• Course reviews
• Exposure to a technology or
• Seeing other courses using a technology
• Identifying a concern or theme
• Or by external pressures such as
• The need for new courses
• Increased student numbers
• The need to reduce costs, or
• A policy to use learning technology
• Or a project may not be obvious

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Awareness Introductions to learning technology

• Awareness of common problems and their learning
  technology solutions
• The workshops on main types of learning
  technology, and briefing recommended reading
• An introduction to learning technology within
  tertiary education in the UK, Ed. Seale J.and
  Rius-Riu M. for ALT 2001
• LTDI materials ed. Stoner G., 1997 especially
  What is learning technology and BRITE ideas
• CTI briefing sheets 1999, online
• Video Technology in teaching and learning,
  Southampton
• Recommended book Integrating technology in
  learning and teaching 2000 Maier P. and Warren A.

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Needs Analysis

• Analysed opportunities and constraints in using
  CIT
• i.e. analysed the needs or requirements
• Put simply, the goal is to describe the gap
  between where the students are and where we want
  them to be, before we can design the bridge they
  can cross.

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Sources of needs analysis

• Learning technology integratione.g. Stoner,
  Laurillard, Conole Oliver, Maeir Warren
• Instructional design e.g. Gagné , Shuell ,
  Anagnostopoulo
• Curriculum design
• Knowledge elicitation and representation
• Action research e.g. Kemmis McTaggart
• Training needs analysis e.g. Peterson
• Systems analysis for software development e.g.
  Yourdon

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Learning technology integratione.g. Stoner

• Analysis and evaluation
• Determine course objectives
• Collect data on students, course, resources,
  policy
• Evaluate extant system
• Identify potential courses of action
• Selection of Learning Technologies
• Generate alternative solutions
• Evaluate alternative against course objectives
• Choose the technology and mode of use

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Learning technology integration e.g. Maier and
Warren

• Section 3.3.1 Planning resource based
  environments
• Learner model - academic needs, expectations, IT
  skills, variety
• Pedagogical model - values and philosophy,
  learning outcomes, how to achieve them, how to
  assess
• Domain model- level content, learning
  outcomes, cross references, resources needed
• Implementation model - select technology to
  deliver
• Evaluation model - how to evaluate

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A needs analysis

• Whether in a review of an existing course, or for
  a planned course, some or all of these tasks will
  help design the intervention
• Analyze the stakeholders especially students
• Analyze the subject domain
• Analyze the learning outcomes
• Analyze the teaching/learning activities
• Analyze the constraints and resources
• Analyze the evaluation methods needed

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1. Stakeholder analysis

• Who are they? Who cares?
• What will they want from the intervention?
• Are we prepared to give it them?
• They include
• The tutor(s)
• Students
• Colleagues
• The department
• The QA office
• The university , regulations, LT Strategy

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The students

• What relevant knowledge and skills have they?
• How varied are they in knowledge and learning
  styles?
• How well can they learn? What study skills?
• What motivation and interests, attitudes to
  teaching/learning methods?
• What obstacles to their learning, such as
  anxiety, lack of concentration, colour
  blindness, computer access ?

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2. The subject domain

• In commercial training needs analysis only task
  performance counts
• In higher education emphasis is on the knowledge
  underpinning performance and generic cognitive
  (key) skills
• We may need to represent the subject domain, the
  context of learning activities and learning
  outcomes
• So we might use knowledge elicitation and
  knowledge representation techniques

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Knowledge elicitation from experts

• Informal interviews with experts.This reveals
  their view of the domain.
• Observation of actual performance of expertise
  done in a natural context.
• Verbal protocols in an assessment situation.A
  protocol provides a framework for capturing the
  knowledge in a skilled performance.
• And the library and the web!

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Knowledge representationSemantic networks

• originally proposed in psychology as a model of
  human memory, as associative nets
• the oldest and most general form of knowledge
  representation
• nodes represent entities, actions or events
  (nouns)
• arcs represent relationships amongst nodes
  (verbs) in direction of arrow

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Knowledge represented as
e.g. a semantic net
have
living things
movement
ako
have
animals
respiration
have
ako
growth
mammals
plants
ako
ako
not have
ako
dogs
humans
movement
orchids
ako
ako
whippets
female humans
ako class is A Kind Ofisa individual Is A
isa
isa
Danny
Julia
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An example semantic network
isa
ako
contract
male
Paul
marriage
parent_of
parent_of
isa
isa
Julie
marriage_1
parent_of
parent_of
year
partner_in
partner_in
Jonathan
Marion
1985
isa
ako class is A Kind Ofisa individual Is A
isa
female
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3. Learning outcomes

• What should students be able to do at the end?
  Perform? Demonstrate?
• Use verbs describe, list, analyse, evaluate,
  derive, compare, predict, calculate, create,
  explain, extrapolate, measure, postulate, propose
  
• Learning outcomes should be
• Written in the future tense
• Identify important goals
• Be achievable and assessable
• Use clear language understood by students
• Many, simple ones or fewer, complex LOs?

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C. Types of learning outcome

• Three domains
• affective
• psychomotor
• cognitive

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Types of learning outcomes -Rogert Gagné

• Learning outcome - example of performance
• 1. Attitudes - prefer the non-smoking
  section
• 2. Motor skills - catch a ball, play
  the piano
• 3. Verbal information - state the books
  author
• 4. Intellectual skills - demonstrate, use
  symbols
• a.Concepts - identify a square, classify a
  plant
• b.Rules - do long division, cross the
  road
• 5. Cognitive strategies - use a
  method

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Types of learning outcomes - Bloom

• A taxonomy of learning objectives in all 3
  domains (for each subject!).
• For the cognitive domain
• 1. knowledge - define, repeat, list, name
• 2. comprehension - restate, describe, explain
• 3. application - apply, use, demonstrate, operate
• 4. analysis - distinguish, compare, contrast
• 5. synthesis - design, compose, plan, formulate
• 6. evaluation - judge, appraise, revise, assess

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John Biggs - SOLO Structures of the Observed
Learning Outcome

• 5 levels of understanding
• 1. miss the point, begs questions
• 2. unistructural - only one aspect understood
• 3. multistructural - seeing the trees but not the
  wood
• 4. relational - seeing the wood, explaining,
  making sense
• 5. extended abstract - going beyond, far
  transference

Little Lots Integrated Creative
Qualitative quantitative
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Pyramids of learning outcomes
to be
able to
to be
to be
to be
to be
able to
able to
able to
able to
entails
to be
to be
to be
able to
able to
able to
to be
to be
to be
able to
able to
able to
Pre-requisites
to be
to be
able to
able to
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Between the devil and the deep blue sea

• vaguenessif you dont know what you are here
  for, you shouldnt be here
• clarity, a shared understanding of subject
  standards, between staff and with students
• atomistic competences, lists of unrelated
  detailed performances without synthetic skills or
  creativity

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4. Teaching/Learning Activities

• Traditional TLAs
• Acquisition e.g. reading, lectures
• Practice - exercises, problems
• Discussion seminars, tutorials
• Discovery field trips, practicals
• Assessment essays, exams

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TLAs Laurillards teaching strategy

• Four aspects of TLAs
• Discursive discussion of goals and conceptions
• Interactiveacting to achieve a goal and receive
  feedback
• Adaptivestudents relate feedback on their work
  to their conceptions
• Reflectivereflect on their actions in the light
  of conceptions

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Conversational Framework (simplified)
instructor
learner
Discussion
learner reading,
descriptions(theory)
teacher or software
writing, discussing
Adaptation
Reflection
Interaction
the world or
actions(practice)
learner actingdoing tasks
microworld for the
learner
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TLAs Laurillards Conversational Framework

• In more detail, 12 activities of which the 10 for
  students are
• Receiving information
• Describing own conceptions (verbally, writing..)
• Correcting misconceptions from feedback
• Re-describing improved conceptions
• Performing tasks
• Receiving feedback on tasks
• Improving performance of tasks
• Reflecting on performance to improve conceptions
• Reflecting on conceptions to improve performance

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TLAs Kolbs cycle

• four stages of learning from experience

concrete experience
reflective observation
active experimentation
abstract conceptualization
(bottom and right of the Conversational Framework)
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TLAs Robert Gagné The nine instructional events

• Use LT to support
• 1. Gain attention
• 2. Tell learners the learning objective
• 3. Stimulate recall
• 4. Present the stimulus, content
• 5. Provide guidance, relevance, organization
• 6. Elicit the learning by demonstrating it
• 7. Provide feedback on performance
• 8. Assess performance, give feedback and
  reinforcement
• 9. Enhance retention and transfer to other
  contexts

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TLAs Shuells Learning Functions

• 1. Expectations must be set
• 2. Motivation must be gained and maintained
• 3. Prior knowledge needs activation
• 4. Draw attention to important items
• 5. Encoding help remembering, give personal
  meaning with diagrams, examples
• 6. Comparisons encourage with diagrams, charts,
  questions

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Shuells Learning Functions - 2

• 7. Hypothesis generation, encourage thinking of
  alternative actions
• 8. Repetition guided practice or reflection,
  multiple examples or perspectives
• 9. Relevant feedback and correction
• 10. Evaluation of feedback as basis of next
  activity
• 11. Monitoring - check for understanding
• 12. Integration provide ways to combine,
  integrate, synthesize, with graphics, multimedia

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5. Constraints resources

• Learning technology availability
• When deadlines, time available
• Who is available to do what
• How tools and resources available
• Other costs

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6. The evaluation in outline

• Summative evaluation, what will count as success?
  (from Kirkpatrick, four ripples)
• What happened in use? Did learners, teachers use
  it? Like it?
• Were learning outcomes achieved?Was student
  performance improved?
• Were the outcomes transferable to real
  situations?
• What were the wider effects? On students, staff
  departments, institution

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References 1

• Bostock S.J. 1996 A critical review of
  Laurillards classification of educational media
  Journal of Instructional Science 24,71-88
• Gagné R M and Medsker K L, The conditions of
  learning training applications 1996, Harcourt
  Brace
• Harmon, P. and King, D. 1985 Representing
  knowledge New York Wiley
• Kirkpatrick D L Evaluating Training Programs
• Kemmis S McTaggart R 1988 (eds) The Action
  Research Planner 3rd ed. Deakin University Press
• Laurillard D. Rethinking University Education,
  1994 Routledge and second edition 2002
• Marshall, I.M., Samson, W.B., Dugard, P.I.
  Scott, WA Predicting the development effort of
  multimedia courseware Information and Software
  Technology 1994 36 (5) 251-258
• Maeir P. and Warren A. 2000 Integrating
  technology in learning and teaching

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References 2

• Oliver, M. and Conole, G. 1998 A pedagogical
  framework for embedding CIT into the curriculum
  ALT-J 6 (2)
• Pederson, K. Expert systems programming
  practical techniques for rule-based systems 1989
  London John Wiley
• Peterson, R. 1992 Training needs analysis in the
  workplace London Kogan Page
• Shuell, T. 1992, Designing Instructional
  Computing Systems for Meaningful Learning, in P.
  Winne M.Jones (eds) Adaptive Learning
  Environments foundations and Frontiers, New
  York Springer Verlag
• Stoner G. A conceptual framework for the
  integration of learning technology, chapter 3 in
  Implementing Learning Technology, LTDI,
  Heriot-Watt 1996http//www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/ltdi/imp
  lementing-it/implt.pdf
• Taba H. 1971 The functions of a conceptual
  framework for curriculum design 134-152 in R.
  Hooper (ed.) The Curriculum context, design and
  development Open University Press