Analysis
Step 9: What content should the course include in order to achieve the instructional goal(s) you have identified?
Describe a process for brainstorming course content and conduct the two steps of a content analysis.
Step
9: Content analysis
Our
course is beginning to take shape. We have a package and a delivery system—now
for the contents. Since we are still in the Analysis phase, this step
is referred to as Content Analysis. In other words, "what
must the course contain in order to achieve the instructional goal(s)?".
Content analysis process... Part A
The first thing you have to do is brainstorm. Try to get all of your thoughts out on a whiteboard or piece of paper. An easy way to facilitate this process is by using Post-Its™. The idea is that you and your partners each take a pad of Post-Its™ and write one specific piece of content on each one.
Next, stick all of the Post-Its™ on a whiteboard. This will allow you to visually check for redundancies
and gaps. The image below is a photo of the post-its that were used to
conduct the content analysis for this course:
In the image above, you will notice that the post-its are grouped into columns which is Part B of the content analysis process. During this part of the process, the idea is to group the content (Post-Its™) into clusters. By the end of this process, you will find that several high-level groups have emerged which can potentially serve as your course modules. The lower-level course content will become your individual lessons.
Once you have finished brainstorming to determine what content
the course should cover in order to achieve the instructional goal(s),
you should record these topics and subtopics in a MS Word table. You will
use and expand on this table throughout the Analysis process. Click here
to view a table that summarizes the content analysis that was conducted
by the authors of this course.
Next lesson
In the next lesson, you will learn how to determine what level of learning each of your content areas represents. To do this, you will discover (or rediscover) Bloom's Taxonomy and view examples of how its outcome-illustrating verbs correspond to the content areas you determined in this lesson.