Analyzing and designing LO content
One of the first things to do in e-Learning development is to conduct a content analysis. During a content analysis, you describe the overall content hierarchy of your e-Learning course with a series of lessons, and the content of required topics that make up each lesson. In doing so, you also need to apply appropriate content taxonomy and instructional design models. Instructional theorists have developed various content taxonomy models:
- Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues (1956) developed three domains of learning, including cognitive domain, affective domain, and psychomotor domain. The cognitive domain is the most popular one, and it includes six levels of learning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
- Robert Gagné (1977) developed five domains of learning outcomes, including verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, attitudes, and motor skills.
- David Merrill (1983)
listed different types of content, including concepts, facts, procedures, and principles,
in his two-dimensional performance content matrix. Another dimension of the
matrix is three levels of performance, including remember, use, and find. After
an additional item, processes, has been added to the types of content, the five
items are often referred to as CFP3 (
The purpose of analyzing instructional content using a taxonomy model is to determine the most appropriate methods and media to deliver the content. To be systematic, you should analyze the content before selecting methods and media. In e-Learning projects, the media category (i.e., computers) is already selected, but media types such as text, image, audio, video, and animation still remain as variables. Therefore, select appropriate media types to support the methods chosen to deliver the e-Learning content. Using a cooking analogy, you would decide whether to eat fish or pork first (the content), and then use different recipes (the methods), perhaps using different utensils (the media), to cook it.
Gagné described verbal information as declarative knowledge (“knowing what”) and intellectual skills as procedural knowledge (“knowing how”). Building upon Gagné’s idea, I propose a taxonomy of three categories for analyzing e-Learning content: 1. declarative knowledge (“knowing what”), 2. procedural knowledge (“knowing how”), and 3. situated knowledge (“knowing when and why”). This taxonomy is explainable within the framework of Merrill’s two-dimensional performance content matrix. In e-Learning, the first two levels of performance, “remember” and “use,” are emphasized (see Clark, 1999; Clark and Harrelson, 2002). Table 1 illustrates how the three categories relate to acquisition (“remember”) and application (“use”) of the five types of content. Declarative knowledge includes remembering and using concepts and facts. Procedural knowledge includes remembering and applying procedures and processes. Situated knowledge will often require all types, but an application of principles is especially important.
| Three categories of e-Learning content | Type: CFP3 Level: Remember → Use | |
| Declarative (knowing what) | Concepts and facts | |
| Procedural (knowing how) | Procedure and processes | |
| Situated (knowing when and how) | Principles | |
Declarative knowledge (knowing what)
Declarative knowledge is often a foundation for more complex knowledge. For designing this “knowing what” type of e-Learning content (concepts and facts), Gagné’s nine events of instruction is useful. As shown in Table 2, the nine events align well with the overall lesson (RLO) structure, suggested in Cisco’s guidelines.
| RLO structure | Gagné’s nine events of instruction |
| Overview | 1. Gain attention |
| 2. Inform learners of objective | |
| 3. Stimulate recall of prior knowledge | |
| A series of topics with practice to help learners | Repeat a sequence of the following four events |
| remember and use: | per topic: |
| • Concepts | 4. Present new content |
| • Facts | 5. Provide learning guidance |
| 6. Elicit performance | |
| 7. Provide feedback | |
| Assessment | 8. Assess performance |
| Summary | 9. Enhance retention and transfer |
For example, the previously-presented learning objective, to define plastic deformation, is a concept, and it is a topic-level objective. In an introductory materials engineering course, one usually learns this concept along with other related concepts and facts, such as elastic deformation, elastic region, and Hooke’s law. They are the topics of a lesson titled, Tensile Properties. From the lesson, students not only acquire the new concepts and facts (the “remember” level), but also solve problems by using the concepts and facts (the “use” level). You can reuse this lesson in an advanced engineering course; thus making it an RLO. When developing this type of e-Learning content, you often need software that allows you to easily present visual representations to illustrate abstract concepts and facts, such as diagrams, images, animation, and video clips.
Procedural knowledge (knowing how)
The “knowing how” type of content includes procedures and processes. To differentiate procedures from processes, think about a medical procedure that a doctor would follow during a surgery; it’s a step-by-step procedure, usually done by one person. Compare it to a manufacturing process, which is often a flow of interrelated steps, involving many people.
One can apply Gagné’s nine events of instruction to the design of a process type of e-Learning content. If the content consists of technical procedures, an alternative method is a show-tell-do-check method, which is an on-the-job training method, originally developed during World Wars I and II. Table 3 shows how the show-tell-do-check method aligns with Cisco’s lesson structure.
| RLO structure | The show-tell-do-check method |
| Overview | Introduction |
| A series of topics with practice to help learners remember and use: • Procedures (technical) | Repeat a sequence of the following two events per topic: 1. Show and tell me (demonstration) 2. Let me do it (simulation) |
| Assessment | Check (test) me (simulation) |
| Summary | Summary |
For example, suppose you are designing a lesson with several procedural topics such as how to send a meeting request using a groupware system. In this lesson, you would first provide a demonstration of the procedure to be learned — this is a “show and tell me how to do it” step, or the “remember” level. After learners become familiar with the procedure, you ask them to actually try it, and provide them with guidance when needed — this is a “let me try it” step. At the end, you ask learners to perform the task without receiving any help — this is a “test me” step. These are the “use” level of performance. When developing this type of demonstration and simulation e-Learning content, you need software that has screen capturing and editing capabilities.
Situated knowledge (knowing when and why)
E-Learning programs can teach not only what it is and how to do it, but also when and why to use certain information. Situated cognition (knowing when and why) requires acquisition and application of principles, often built upon relevant declarative and procedural knowledge. An instructional method that helps develop situated cognition is a problem-based learning (PBL) strategy. In a face-to-face group learning environment, group discussions and collaboration with peers facilitates PBL. But, in a self-paced e-Learning environment, interaction occurs between the learner and the content without the presence of peers. Therefore, it becomes critical to design a self-paced e-Learning lesson with a sophisticated inquiry-based navigation sequence and constructive feedback, which can be a challenging task.
A simulated role-playing technique is often utilized when implementing the PBL method in e-Learning (see Table 4). Learners are presented with a problem using a realistic scenario, and then they are guided through the process of selecting the most appropriate actions to solve the problem. In doing so, learners often participate in simulated role-playing, and are encouraged to use resources provided in the program. They receive constructive feedback on their actions, which helps them understand the consequences of their actions. You can also use the simulated role- playing technique in the lesson assessment.
| RLO structure | The problem-based learning method |
| Overview | Introduction |
| A series of topics with practice to help learners remember and use:
|
Repeat a cycle of PBL within a realistic scenario: Role-play within a realistic scenario
|
| Assessment | Assessment |
| Summary | Summary |
For example, when workplace harassment-prevention training is delivered to employees, its goal is to help them not only understand harassment policies and guidelines (the “remember” level), but also be able to prevent, or to recognize and report, harassment situations (the “use” level). When developing this type of e-Learning content, you may want to look for software that allows you to branch through multiple paths of actions and provide immediate constructive feedback. Also, to create a more realistic context, you want to increase the degree of fidelity by using animation and video clips of actors playing out situations, rather than still images or text only.
