With this post I have gone off the track a Little bit and is not what I promised the last time. This should have been ideally posted before the part2. Pardon me for this over sight. Its also pretty long one so please have the patience to read through the entire post. It is my attempt to bring some kind of order to my study of the theory on instructional designing.
So here we go..............
What is instructional Designing?
This is a summary of my understanding from the book Mastering the Instructional design Process (Chapter 1). Instructional designing is creating instruction. It is the way of analyzing human Performance problem , identifying the root cause to the problem, developing solutions to address the problem and then implementing the best possible solution that minimizes and unintended consequences.
That quite a mouth full but that would summarize the real purpose and the process of Instructional designing. So if all of this relates to performance problems then one needs to first understand performance.
Performance
Performance is result achieved due to a purposeful activity. There are two aspects to performance efficiency and effectiveness.
Efficiency in performance can be understood by answering a simple question “are we doing things right?”
Effectiveness in performance is best explained by the answer to the question ,“Are we doing the right things?”
So for an ideal performance we need to do the right things in the right way, however that’s where the problem lies.
A human performance model helps us understand performance problems. So it would be correct to say that ID is guide by human performance model.
There are 2 types of human performance model.
1. Comprehensive Human performance model
2. Situation Specific Human Performance Model
Factors Affecting Performance
Individual Performance
Job Context: The job environment like supervisor , customers including availability of tools
Motivation: Do the individuals have the desire to perform
Knowledge: Facts and Information needed to perform or do the job
Skills: The necessary physical skills required to perform the job
Attitude: Feeling about the job.
Aptitude: The requirement of necessary mental and physical skills
Ability: The capability to do the job
Work Group Performance
Structure: The way work is allocated to group members
Leadership: The reporting structure
Role: Each individual’s awareness of the role they play in the group
Status: The relative position of people in the group.
Cohesiveness: The extent to which members are unified to achieve the group goal
Norm: The accepted beliefs of a group about the methods and the result to be achieved.
Organizational Performance
Structure: The way work is divided up and allocated to parts of the organization.
Environment: The world outside the organization.
Culture: Beliefs and attitudes shared by members of an organization
Strategy: The means to achieve desired ends. It denotes an organization’s long-term direction
Technology: Actions taken by Is the people to change objects, people situations. Often refers to “how the work is done”
The model describes all the factor that affect performance. The root cause to the performance problem can lie in any of these factors.
Situation Specific Performance Model
According to Rummler’s Situation Specific Model the cause of a performance problem can lie in one of the factor is either, the job situation, individual performer, the responses, the consequences or the feedback.
Job Situation: The performance issue is rests here if the required performance is not clear.
Performer: The problem stems here if the performer does not have the required mental or physical ability.
Response: If the requires skills, resources or tools aren’t provide then the problem arises here
Consequences: If the consequences either don’t exist or are negative then the problem lays here.
Feedback: If there is not feedback mechanism then the performer would not the consequences to a particular activity or decision.
As an ID you need to understand that not every performance issue can be solved with instruction or training. As a n Instructional Designer one should look at the best solution to the problem which may not always be Instruction.
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