TASK ANALYSIS

Task analysis is the process of learning about ordinary users by observing them in action to understand in detail how they perform their tasks and achieve their intended goals.   Tasks analysis helps identify the tasks that your website and applications must support and can also help you refine or re-define your site’s navigation or search by determining the appropriate content scope.

When to Perform a Task Analysis

It’s important to perform a task analysis early in your process, in particular prior to design work.  Task analysis helps support several other aspects of the user-centered design process, including:

• Website requirements gathering
• Developing your content strategy and site structure
• Wireframing and Prototyping
• Performing usability testing

Types of Task Analysis

There are several types of task analysis but among the most common techniques used are:

Cognitive Task Analysis is focused on understanding tasks that require decision-making, problem-solving, memory, attention and judgment.

Hierarchical Task Analysis is focused on decomposing a high-level task subtasks.

How to Conduct a Task Analysis

Your task analysis may have several levels of inquiry, from general to very specific.  In addition to market research, competitive analysis, and web metrics analysis, you can identify top tasks through various user research techniques.

TEACHING ENGLISH WITHOUT TEACHING ENGLISH

In this talk Roberto discusses his three phase system which he uses to teach English without teaching English, to improve the learning experience for students and the teaching practice for professors.

I think that it's a great point to let students make mistakes, but it's so different from the modern, standard educational system. You're right. Content is far more important than form. Being able to communicate–even grammatically incorrectly–is the motivation needed to continue to copy those who speak more "correctly." But even then, language is always changing, and English hasn't always been English. There are no hard and fast rules except those we agree to.



I absolutely agree with the inclusion of a b.s. detector for students. The emphasis on analyzing, questioning, and investigating is something that should be a bigger part of educating students to create a smarter society, ready to defend against a sea of flawed information surrounding the world. Plus upon analyzing information in English, students can have an easier time using English once they are trained in their expressions of thought and analysis.

Bloom's Taxonomy

What is a bloom taxonomy according all seen in the first session class is important to define and explain the origin and the actualization that the bloom taxonomy had.

The Taxonomy is the study of the general principles of scientific classification.

 The Bloom's Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.

The Three Domains of Learning

The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al. 1956):

Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)

Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)

Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Since the work was produced by higher education, the words tend to be a little bigger than we normally use. Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers, trainers, and educators often refer to these three categories as KSA (Knowledge [cognitive], Skills [psychomotor], and Attitudes [affective]). This taxonomy of learning behaviors may be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the three most prominent ones being (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):

changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms

rearranging them as shown in the chart below

creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix

The chart shown below compares the original taxonomy with the revised one:

This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate.