CHAPTER 4 IDENTIFYING SUBORDINATE SKILLS AND ENTRY BEHAVIORS

Objective:

·         Describe approaches to subordinate skills analysis including hierarchical, cluster, and combination techniques.

·         Describe the relationship among the subordinate skills identified trough subordinate skills analysis, including entry behaviors.

·         Apply subordinate skills analysis techniques to steps in the goal analysis and identify entry behaviors as are appropriate.   

Background

Identifying subordinate skills and entry behaviors is a second step in instructional analysis.The purpose of this step is to identify the appropriate set of subordinate skills for each step. If required skills are ommited from the instruction and many students do not already have them, then the instruction will be ineffective. It means that, if superfluous skills are include, the instruction will take more time than it should and the unnecessary skills may actually interference with learning the required skills.

Concepts

There are 2 approaches in subordinate skill analysis.

1.      Hierarchical Approaches

Hierarchial approaches is used to analyze individual steps in the goal analysis that are classified as intellectual or psychomotor skills. To understand the hierarchial approach, consider an instructional goal that requires the students to justofy the recommendation that a particular piece of real estate should be purchased at a particular time. This approche suggested by Gagne. In this approache, the designer can identify one or more critical subordinate skills that will be required of the learner prior to attempting instruction on the step itself. This hierarchy of skill is helpful to the designer because it can be used to suggest the type of specific subordinate skills that will be required to support any particular step in the goal

2.      Cluster Analysis

Cluster analysis makes little sense to try to do a goal analysis of verbal information goal because no logival procedure is inherent in the goal. Cluster analysis may not involve going from one step to the next. The most meaningful analysis of a verbal information goal is identify the major categories of information that are implied by the goal. With verbal information you are not identifying a squence of steps, but mainly you are just identifying the information that is needed to achieve your goal.

There are three sub skills in subordinate skills:

1.      Subordinate skills analysis techniques for attitude goals

2.      Combining instructional analysisi techniques

3.      Instructional analysis diagrams

Entry Behaviors

This chapter will describe how the designer identifies entry behaviors and indicate why this is so important. The procedure used to identify entry behaviors is directly related to the subordinate skills analysis process. Identify exactly what learners will already have to know or be able to do before they begin the instruction. The procedure used to identify entry behaviors is directly related to the subordinate skills analysis process. Assume that you have such a highly developed hierarchy. It represents the array of skills required to take a learner from the most basic level of understanding up to your instructional goal. It is likely, however, that your learners already have some of these skills, and therefore not be necessary to teach all the skills in the extended hierarchy.

In order to identify the entry behaviors for the instruction , examine the hierarchy or cluster analysis and identify those skills that a majority of the learners will have already mastered before beginning of the onstruction. Draw a dotted line above these skills in the analysis chart. The skills that appear above the dotted line will be those you must teach in your instruction. Those that fall below the line are called entry behaviors.

Entry behaviour is important because They are defined as the skills that fall directly below the skills. Without these skills, a learner will have a very difficult time trying to learn fromthe instruction. Entry behaviors are a key component in the design process.  Instructional design should identify expected entry baheviors of learners by continuing the instructional analysis the point that skills identified become basic for their learners.

The Tentatives of Entry Behaviors

The idenification of entry behaviors is one of the real danger spots in the instructional design process. The point is that the designer is making assumption about both what learners must and should already know. It should be noted that the designer is making a set of assumptions at this early point about the learners who will use the instruction.

In summary, to conduct a subordinate skills analysis, it must analyze each of the major steps in a goal. Hierarchial analysis should be used with intellectual and psychomotor skills. During the subordinate skills analysis phase, each of the behaviors would need to be analyzed and be careful in determining entry behaviors.