ADDIE: Analysis

Picture this: you’re a program administrator of a youth organization in your area. Your organization highly relies on adult volunteers for its success; after all, you’re just one person and no one can work 24/7. Your members are interested in a variety of topics, so you have volunteers with expertise in all areas to help them learn and succeed. You’re starting to notice that new members of your organization make comments reflecting a different understanding on the requirements to participate. Interestingly enough, these members all have different volunteers that they’ve interacted with since joining. You start to wonder if your volunteers have all the same information. You inherited some volunteers from the person in your position before, but some you’ve recruited since working with the organization. You’re worried that if your volunteers all give different answers, your new members won’t be sure what they need to do and leave before even getting involved. What should you do next? As the person responsible for program administration and volunteer recruitment, I would say it’s time to investigate what’s going on in your organization. Following the ADDIE model brings you to the first step: the Analysis phase. But what exactly does the Analysis phase entail? There are three primary facets of the analysis step: needs analysis, task analysis, and learner analysis. According to Cheung (2016), “a needs analysis is conducted to determine whether the particular skill or knowledge we want to teach is truly needed for the learners to function in the workplace and whether they currently lack this skill or knowledge” (p.2). Knowing that your project is truly necessary is essential to avoiding wasting time and effort. It’s best to do this on the front end of a project before you’re in too deep. You can complete the needs analysis through one-on-one interviews, surveys, focus groups, or even a combination of methods (Cheung, 2016, p.2). As you gather information, it’s essential to categorize and find themes among your responses. Through the evaluation of your answers, you should be able to find a common goal that your (potential) course could solve. Going back to our scenario, perhaps you’d start by calling or texting your volunteers and asking them if some questions. I would ask things like:

• When you first started volunteering, did you attend a workshop or training about our program?

• How often do you look at the volunteer handbook? Do you know we have a volunteer handbook?

• If you have questions about our organization, who do you call to ask?

• Do you think volunteers could benefit from a training when they start volunteering?

If your volunteers aren’t comfortable with being completely honest with you, it may be best to have them complete a survey anonymously. Since you’re part of a larger organization, it may be good to reach out to your colleagues and see what their experiences are like when it comes to volunteer knowledge and training. Do they offer onboarding classes? Do they feel like this is a need for their region too? You’ll also want to contact your state leadership if you have any. They may have ideas and suggestions based on program enrollment data that can help direct your efforts. The next facet of the Analysis phase is the task analysis. Cheung (2016) recommends this stage includes a breakdown of “the tasks the learners must perform, as well as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they require” as these “will later inform the learning objectives” (p.2). Your needs analysis will help define what it is your audience is missing, whereas the task analysis will be further listing and describing those specific pieces of information that will help your audience meet the education goals. For our adult youth organization volunteers, this could look like:

• Defining what a member of the organization is (age, interest, etc.)

• Understanding the mission of the organization at the national level

• Knowing the role of the adult volunteer in the organization (day-to-day tasks, special events, etc.)

Discovering the tasks or information can come partially from the data gathered from the needs analysis as well as from the insight of subject matter experts. You may find that the task analysis will help you decide what’s appropriate for the topic and what can be addressed later. Perhaps the separation of tasks is based on knowledge and skill, with one needing to come before the other. The third and final part of the Analysis phase includes the learner analysis. Cheung (2016) defines this part of the process as the point that “educators…establish the learners’ current knowledge and skills, their motivation for learning the subject, and their learning preference” (p. 3). You can gather this information through focus groups or further one-on-one conversations with your audience. You may also research your audience demographics from other data-collecting sources, such as the Pew Research Center or the U.S. Census. Any pre-test data you may have over a specific topic or post-workshop surveys your organization may have from previous course or session could also be beneficial to this part of the analysis. Understanding the current knowledge level, motivation, and preferences for our audience in our example could easily come from focus groups with a few of our volunteers as well as our colleagues and state leadership. If our volunteers are part of a larger organization, we’ll want to ensure that we reinforce the right pieces of programming to enhance not only our own area but the state/larger organization as well.

The Analysis phase focuses on developing an understanding of the needs of your client, the audience to be served, and the topic to be taught or reinforced. It’s in this phase of the process that you do grassroots research with the intent of defining the issue or opportunity that needs support to reach a goal or specific progress marker.

For example, say you are finding that your adult volunteers in a youth organization have a high level of variance in understanding of the objectives of their clubs or projects. As the administrator of the program, you’re concerned that the variations in their responses to questions about the organization or requirements for membership could pose a public relations issue or discourage new families from joining. If you want to rectify this issue, the first step would be to investigate why there may be different levels of understanding between your volunteers. Is it because of tenure with the organization? Has everyone had the same training? Did anyone come from a different region where they received a different workshop on the organization?

Your time in the Analysis phase is essential for setting up the other aspects of the ADDIE model. The more legwork you can do early, the stronger your decisions can be in later stages. Stay tuned for more riveting blog content on the ADDIE process – we’ll cover the design phase next!

Sources:

Cheung, L. (2016). Using the ADDIE Model of Instructional Design to Teach Chest

Radiograph Interpretation. Journal of Biomedical Education, 2016, 9502572.

https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/9502572