In needs assessment, storytelling and contextually based design provide a way for describing not only the tasks that the intended learners must master, but the context in which people will perform them and their likely feelings about the situation. Three storytelling techniques let you uncover the content to be taught:

• A day in the life

• Cognitive task analysis

• Oral history

A Day in the Life

Coming from the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), a day in the life is a research technique in which a course designer follows a “performer” (someone who regularly performs the task to be taught) for a period of time. The technique gets its name because most people conduct the research over the course of a day. In some instances, however, the research must be conducted over a different time frame (Wilson, 2001).

Using this technique, the course designer acts like a fly on the wall, observing and recording everything that the performer does, as well as the environment in which the performer interacts. The course designer can record the activities in a hand-written journal but often videotapes the performer.

In some instances, the performer being followed is an expert performer, and the goal of the learning program is teaching others to perform like this expert. In other instances, the performer being followed is a weak performer, and the goal of the research is to understand what makes weak performance so that the learning program can directly address the problem. In ideal situations, instructional designers look at both expert and weak performers and figure out how their learning program fills the “gap” between the two.

In addition to observing the behavior and environment in which it occurs, instructional designers also interview the performer. The interviews occur throughout the day, at times when they would not intrude on the work being observed. Through the interviews, instructional designers gain insight into decisions that the performer makes and other behaviors that might not be visible or might not be clear from observing. Instructional designers also gain insight into challenges that the performer faces and motivations underlying the performer’s work.

Finally, instructional designers include their thoughts about the situation when conducting day-in-the-life research. These thoughts might include questions that can be answered later (especially in the interviews), impressions, and issues that designers might need to address in a learning program.

Cognitive Task Analysis

Acognitive task analysis is a technique used to elicit information about how to perform a task from an expert. The task is usually a thinking—or cognitive—one, in which most of the tasks are not observable to the eye. Rather, they are only observable if the performer were to write down each task.

A cognitive task analysis is a two-part process. In the first part, an instructional designer asks the expert how to perform a task. The task is usually approached in a broad way, such as “How do you make an airline reservation?” The expert explains, and the instructional designer records the process in a step-by-step fashion. But many experts do not fully explain the processes in which they have expertise. In some cases, the omission is purposeful. Some experts believe that they have unique knowledge and fear that this uniqueness will be lost if they explain how to perform the task in which they are expert. So these experts purposefully omit information. (One example is a baker who shares a cookie recipe but purposely leaves out an ingredient so the cookies won’t taste the same if others make them.) More often, however, the omission is accidental. Most experts unconsciously perform much of their work, performing tasks without even thinking about them. For example, many U.S.-based travel agents would automatically try to route domestic travelers to Chicago to Midway airport. They would not consider O’Hare, but if asked, could explain that flights to Midway are usually less expensive than those to O’Hare, and Midway is closer to the urban center than O’Hare.

So to find out how experts really perform a task, an instructional designer would ask a second time. But instead of asking, “How do you make a reservation?” instructional designers would pose the task as a real-world problem—the beginning of a story, sort of. “So suppose I come to you and ask you to make reservations for a trip between Pittsburgh and Chicago, what would you do? I would need to leave on Thursday the 25th and return on Monday the 29th, and want to stay at a hotel near Michigan Avenue, but not pay more than $125 a night before taxes.” The experts would finish the story, explaining exactly what they would do. If needed, instructional designers would pose similar problems to gain additional perspective.

Instructional designers then compare the two versions of the task—the original and the one told in a story format—to see what was included in the second version that was left out of the first. This gives designers not only a more complete version of the task but helps them figure out which parts of the task learners might eventually perform without thinking.

Oral History

Oral history is a technique used in other branches of the social sciences such as history and anthropology to capture pivotal events in the past from the people who lived through them. The recounting of events is usually told as a story. The informants (people who lived through the events) usually experienced the events from one perspective, and the account that they tell usually represents this perspective. For example, a writer assigned to develop a book about the fiftieth anniversary of a military base interviewed all of the general managers who were still living, as well employees who had worked at the base for at least thirty years. Each informant provided a different perspective. Some focused on the changing politics of the military, others on the changing look of the base, and still others on the changes in military technology. Only through the entire set of interviews did a more complete history of the base emerge.

Oral histories have become increasingly popular as a means of researching topics of corporate interest, such as corporate history, management decision making, and design processes. For example, when preparing a section on corporate culture for a new employee orientation course, an instructional designer interviewed several long-time company employees to get a sense of the values that have been emphasized over the years and to find tangible evidence of those values in action. This first-person, “I was there,” perspective adds a sense of authenticity and completeness to the content, but usually lacks perspective. In some instances, people fill in missing facts with second-hand information. In other instances, key facts may be missing altogether. To address this incompleteness, instructional designers collect as many people’s perspectives on the situation as possible. The additional perspectives provide for a more complete—if not fully complete—story. In other instances, instructional designers augment the oral histories with news accounts from the time.