Creating an environmental scan, needs assessment document, or simply asking the 5 W’s allows an instructional designer to evaluate and improve the creation of an instructional design for learning. More specifically, knowing the learning context guides the instructional designer to meet the learning needs requested and needed to achieve ownership of the new content. This artifact is an example of content used to provide new instructional designers with tools to support identification of the audience, environmental preconditions, and help align those learning goals requested by the company to the learning needs of the participants.
Artifact
The following is a team assessment created to support new instructional designers with the tools and theories to create a personalized needs assessment. The intent of the assignment was to help learners compare and contrast different tools used within the creation of a needs assessment.
In your readings you looked at several different methods of conducting a needs assessments and/or environmental scan. Within IDT, tools for
conducting a needs assessment are often customized for a particular set of
business problems. Discuss and determine key common characteristics between these three approaches:
- The five competencies from the Scans artifact.
- Table 2.2 of the Cennamo & Kalk Learning Needs and Characteristics.
- The 10 characteristics of environmental qualities that contribute to powerful Professional Learning Communities (see pg 43 of the PLC Environmental Scan).
Create a table or matrix that compares the three resources. Summarize in a single paragraph your conclusions on why you selected certain characteristics as being key to any needs assessment and/or environmental scan.
Student Example 1
| SCANS |
Learner Needs and Characteristics |
Learning Communities |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Resources | Resources (Time, Money, Material and Facilities, Human Resources) |
|
Resources will be required for:
|
| Stakeholders | The primary stakeholders will help to provide the Resources (e.g. executive approval) and Information (e.g. subject matter experts). |
|
We need stakeholders to provide safety and trust, empowerment, openness, and respect in the community. |
| Audience (prior knowledge, motivation, abilities) | The interpersonal, information, systems, and technologies are the competencies that apply to our audience. | This method defines how we approach our audience. | Safety and trust, openness, respect, responsiveness, collaboration, enjoyment, esprit de corps, empowerment are qualities we need in our audiences. |
| Environment |
|
Elements of Learning and Application Context apply to the environment. | All 10 of these qualities apply to the environment of the learning community. |
| Current State | These competencies (Resources, Information, Systems, Technology, and Interpersonal) of the SCANS method helps to identify the current state of the problem or issue. | We believe prior knowledge/experience and cognitive and physical abilities are key examples of this. | Identifying these environmental qualities also help determine the current state of the problem or issue. |
Why we selected these characteristics as being key to any needs assessment and/or environmental scan:
- Resources
- We selected resources as a key characteristic because our resources are finite and we need to use them wisely. All three approaches give due consideration to time, materials, money, human resources etc when identifying needs.
- Stakeholders
- Stakeholders include executive support, subject matter experts, project team, instructors and learners. A critical need from all stakeholders is their buy-in in order to help the project succeed. These stakeholders help to provide resources, content expertise, completion of identified deliverables, instruction and active participation.
- Audience
- The audience will drive the aspects for the design of the deliverables. We found evidence of the prior knowledge, motivation and ability characteristics identified in the three articles.
- Environment
- We selected environment as being a key characteristic because to understand our learners needs we need to consider the conditions they will be learning in (learning context) and the conditions in which they will apply new knowledge (application context). All three approaches consider the environment.
- Current State
- We need to know our baseline or starting point in order to find the gaps. Each of these three methods support identifying the current state. We determined that Resources, Stakeholders, Audience, and Environment are required to determine the Current State.
Student Example 2
|
Characteristics |
SCANS |
C and K Article |
PCL |
| Define Business Problem | |||
| Resources (learning Context, Systems and Technology, Application Context) |
x |
x |
|
| Prior Knowledge and Experience (Learning Types) |
x |
||
| Motivation |
x |
x |
|
| Organizational Culture (Safety and Trust, Respect) |
x |
x |
|
| Change Agility (Responsiveness) |
x |
x |
|
| Risk Assessment (Challenge) |
x |
||
| Stakeholders |
x |
Our group discussed various past experiences in performing formal and informal needs analysis and we found that the same basic themes were apparent. Team 4 selected the above as key characteristics for a needs analysis because we feel that the needs analysis should gather and focus on the most important but basic information to create a successful learning environment. We brought forth experience working with both to internal and external clients, which led to the deeper discussion of the various differences between these groups. It was important that our key characteristics applied to all situations.
Reflection
This team assessment demonstrated that the individuals within the course worked collaboratively to compare and contrast the given needs assessment tools. Each group provided the content from the provided tools and aligned them with the processes used within Cerner Corporation’s Learning Architects’ program requirements.
Each team presented a different structure of analysis yet shared examples from each tool set to give a rationale based on the construct of the team analysis. The two student assessments provide evidence that learners understood, compared, and analyzed the structural components of a needs assessment to improve participant learning.
IBSTPI Competencies
Planning and Analysis- 6
Conduct a needs assessment in order to recommend appropriate design solutions and strategies.
I met this competency by providing creating an assessment that included a variety of content while requesting learner to synthesize content. The needs assessment identified prior knowledge, level of content learning, ability of learner to use the existing tools, and motivation of the learners to connect new learning with current practice. As seen in each student example, there was a difference between the explanation of content and connections to current practice. Student example 2 shows a team who was more interested in completion of task and less on analysis of learning.
Reimagining Education 