My previous article, Instructional Design for Teachers | Analyzing Your Student as Learner discussed analyzing your student as a learner. This article looks at the meaning of analyzing your students and what you, as a teacher, get from doing this. We will discuss the challenges of analyzing your students and easy methods to use for this process.
Challenges of Analyzing Your Students
One challenge in analyzing your students as learners is trying to understand and answer the question "what motivates students to participate?" The answer to this question helps you design and create learning materials that encourage and motivate your students. Analyzing your students BEFORE creating learning materials brings you closer to designing successful course materials.
A second challenge is that there are various learning styles of students which make it often difficult to develop a model or profile of your student as learner. Also, there is still no evidence to indicate a positive correlation between academic achievement and designing towards learning styles. In other words, you go through the trouble to custom design based on users' learning styles and it still may not achieve student success.
A third challenge is that the need for universal design and accessibility just adds layers of complexity to your design process. For instance, web-based delivering instruction online now must have alternate text for images, appropriate blending of colors and font sizes for increased readability. For most teachers, this can be very time consuming task to complete.
A third challenge is that the need for universal design and accessibility just adds layers of complexity to your design process. For instance, web-based delivering instruction online now must have alternate text for images, appropriate blending of colors and font sizes for increased readability. For most teachers, this can be very time consuming task to complete.
Methods of Conducting Learner Analysis
In the instructional design world, a learner analysis is an analysis of the motivations, learning styles and abilities of the intended audience. Practically, a learner analysis is done to arrive at a profile for the learner who is being instructed. Let's talk about two easy methods of conducting learner analysis, namely, Mager (1988) and Smaldino, Lowther and Russell (2012). I like these methods for analyzing students because they are simple and most effective from my experience.
The Mager (1988) approach for analyzing your students as learners is to create a working document that begins by describing your students as they are, NOT what you'd like them to be. This is important because it encourages a more student-centered design. In this approach, you would list everything you know about your students including, but not limited to, ages, sex distribution in the class, educational backgrounds, reason for taking your class, biases, hobbies, personal interests, physical attributes, reading and language levels. To get this information, you can create quick surveys, polls, first week forums or just email these questions to your students.
The second method of analyzing your students is to use the approach described in Smaldino, Lowther, and Russell (2012). They suggest that you focus your analysis on three areas. They are -
1) general characteristics - this includes demographics, socioeconomic, cultural identity, shared values and past experiences that would affect the instruction is received.
2) entry competencies - this includes prior knowledge that learners are believed to have acquired.
3) learning styles - this will inform designers of what learners will "find attractive and effective instruction".
Conclusion
Before you create instructional materials - exams, learning activities, discussion forum questions, etc., be sure to take time to analyze your students. As shown in this article, you can do this by using very simple methods for obtaining the information you need to form a profile of your students. By making your design process more student-centered, you ensure that your course materials will serve the student well by fulfilling their needs during their learning experience.
References
Additional Resources
Free 'Clickers' for All: Using Google Forms to Survey Your Students
Google Surveys https://www.google.com/forms/about/
Simply Psychology - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Using Google Forms for Student Engagement and Learning
http://er.educause.edu/articles/2011/3/using-google-forms-for-student-engagement-and-learning
http://er.educause.edu/articles/2011/3/using-google-forms-for-student-engagement-and-learning
