Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

I sat in on some training yesterday, and the trainer was discussing task analysis…I have a love/hate relationship with task analysis, because within the military, these are often very tedious to develop. However, they are important. I understand that.

Task Analysis

A task analysis involves breaking down a task into each step and sub-step required to complete the task. It seems simple enough, right? Task analysis are important when it comes to breaking down the components of a task to ensure effective training. Often times we take for granted things we already know how to do, but when we’re trying to teach someone else how to do a certain task, the learner needs to know each of the elements required to effectively complete the task.

For example, the task “Make a latte” involves more than just a cup, espresso, and milk. It may require:

– Selecting the appropriate sized cup

– Selecting a steaming pitcher

– Remove milk from fridge

– Pour milk into steaming pitcher

– Steam milk

– Brew espresso into cup

– Remove cup once espresso has finished brewing

– Pour steamed milk on top of espresso

Now, these are just some of the steps, but within these steps, there are sub-steps. For example:

– Steam milk

– Place steaming wand in milk

– Place thermometer in pitcher of milk

– Activate/turn on steaming wand

– Begin aerating milk

– Steam to a temperature of X

– Remove pitcher of milk

– Wipe steaming wand down

– Turn on steaming wand to clear milk residue

– Turn off steaming wand

And within these sub-steps, there may be even more sub-steps. When conducting a task analysis, you really want to break down the original task into the most painful of details (and sub-tasks).

Within the military, this often involved extremely lengthy Job Task Analysis spreadsheets, that would further break down whether each task and sub-task was considered a knowledge, skill, or attitude. These further breakdowns will allow you to better refine the way in which you train the user how to do the task/sub-task.

Ensure you’re concise with your task analysis and that you’re only including one task or sub-task per item. Nothing should piggyback on top of one another…that’s just lazy and will become ineffective when you move on to develop training.

Task analysis are also useful when working with other developers (e.g. programmers or media developers). You can use a task analysis to describe the breakdown of media or programmatic (or both) elements, and then you have a detailed account of what should happen and when so that these developers have a greater understanding of how to develop the content they’re developing.

Stay tuned for a time-lapse demo and freebie of a task analysis template!

Resources

Task Analysis in Instructional Design by Donald Clark

How to Do a Task Analysis Like a Pro by Articulate

Task Analysis: An Individual and Population Approach, 3rd Edition by S. Wilson and G. Landry

A couple of years ago I submitted a sample interaction to an E-Learning Heroes Challenge related to Instructional Design Principles. The interaction sought to explain cognitive load theory. You can check out the full interaction by Clicking Here.

Within the university I see a ton of cognitive overload happening, albeit unintentional. When faculty members use their online course site as a repository, I look at it feeling very overwhelmed and set about organizing the content appropriately to ensure students don’t feel as overwhelmed as I do.

Cognitive Load Theory

In the early 80s, John Sweller coined the phrase ‘cognitive load theory’, which represents the total amount of brain power being used in a given task. Basically the exertion associated with working memory and how much effort is required to employ working memory.

In order to be most efficient with cognitive load, individuals must appropriately balance information presented to the audience in order to enhance overall information retention. There are three types of cognitive load:

1. Intrinsic – this represents the level of difficulty (e.g. complex math problem versus basic math problem).
2. Extraneous – this represents how the information is provided (e.g. is the information need to know or nice to know? If nice to know, you may want to leave it out to enhance retention).
3. Germane  – this represents how easily a learner can process the information for which they’ve been provided.

Keeping these three types of cognitive load in mind will allow you to optimize your content and enhance the overall learning experience. As an educator, you want your students to succeed, and pummelling them with information to get a simple concept across is not always the best approach. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your learners and simplify concepts as much as possible to ensure student success.

Have you been overloaded with content? How did this shape your learning experience and academic achievement? Let me know in the comments!

I’m a very visual person and I have seen some terrible use of colours in e-learning, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about colour palettes and how to effectively use them in e-learning.

Colour Palettes

Colour palettes are the range of colours used by an individual in a particular project. Choosing an appropriate colour palette is essential to any project as it sets the tone for the e-learning. For example, if you choose a yellow background with white text, your learners may hate the project because it’s difficult to read the content. Whereas, a white background with black text is much easier on the eyes.

Considerations

When choosing a colour palette, you should first consider whether your client has any existing visual standards or branding guidelines. If they do, you will want to align your colour palette with these guidelines.

If you have free range to define the colour palette, you should keep the colour range between 3-5 colours. Too many colours may overwhelm your audience. If your client has provided visuals of any sort (logo, photos, graphics, etc.), you may want to begin with one of these visual elements and pull colours from the visual.

Use Your Resources!

There are heaps of colour resources out there, so don’t be intimidated if you’re not graphically inclined. These websites can help generate palette options and/or allow you to pull colours from images to create palettes. Here are some examples:

Colourlovers.com

Colourlovers.com allows you to sift through thousands of user-created colour palettes and retrieve the associated hex values – over the years, this has been one of my favourite colour resources.

Coolors.co

Coolors.co is a new-to-me resource, and is currently my favourite colour palette resource. It is a colour palette generator, and all you have to do is click the space bar to see a new palette – SO EASY! You can even adjust the colours if aren’t quite right, without losing the rest of the colours in the proposed palette.

Adobe Color CC

Adobe Color CC is neat because it allows you to upload an image and will then generate colour palettes from this image. You can choose the colour mood, which provides varying shades to the palette suggested, and you can also select a custom colour mood and customize to your liking.

Last week, at the Articulate Community Roadshow in Toronto, I provided an example of how important it is to value your time and resources, and it involved transcription…and the fact that I learned a very valuable life lesson regarding the value of my time and pricing myself appropriately.

Transcription

Transcription is a written representation of something, and often occurs when a print version of a video or audio recording is prepared. Transcription is often word-for-word, but may omit extraneous words (e.g. ‘uh’) that do not provide value, but which when removed to not impact the semantics of the message.

When I first began freelancing, my very first gig was transcribing 8 hours of audio interviews into text…for 60 dollars. 8 hours of audio transcribed to text for 60 dollars. I see you laughing. It was a painful, painful, painful, lesson, but at least the content was interesting. Needless to say, you will seldom see me volunteering to transcribe materials.

Within education, a main function of transcription is to increase accessibility of materials. Individuals may prefer to learn by reading text versus listening to audio, or they may have a visual or auditory impairment that requires a transcript. Too often I see faculty members including videos and/or podcasts in their courses without including a transcript, and while this may not be a problem 90% of the time, it puts students requiring a transcript the an awkward position of having to ask for one.

Often times individuals are oblivious to the need or feel as though someone else (e.g. disability services) will take on the responsibility of creating transcripts. The omission of a transcript is almost always unintentional. However, in keeping with universal instructional design principles, I always explain the importance of transcription and accessibility whenever I meet with faculty members. Some major concerns I hear include: “but how will I do that?!” or “I don’t have time for that!,” and for these questions, I’ve discovered some easy solutions:

• F5 Transcription – Free and easy; aids in transcription of audio/video files.
• Transcribe – Free transcription service.
• Transcriber Pro – Tool for manual transcription to test.