Content and Instructional Analysis for Cognitive Transfer Tasks. Working Paper Number 40.

Five assumptions underlie task analysis procedures in instructional development in higher education. These are: 1) content and instructional strategy are independent; 2) most courses involve two types of content--concepts and operations; 3) two levels of abstraction are involved--generalities and instances; 4) four levels of behavior are most common--discriminated recall, classification, rule using, and rule finding; and 5) instructional strategies should focus upon rule using and rule finding, based on mastery models derived from needs and goals. Task analysis consists of content analysis and instructional analysis. Content analysis requires that the analyst: 1) identify and define the concepts in an area; 2) determine and specify the change operations used to relate them; 3) symbolically represent each role; and 4) identify instances for concepts and rules. Instructional analysis should recognize that higher education stresses cognitive transfer behavior and should order content to achieve such behaviors. Four steps are needed: 1) the identification of needs and goals; 2) the specification of a mastery model; 3) the specification of rule using and rule finding situations; and 4) the sequencing of required concepts and operations from the content network. (PB)