Formative Research on the Heuristic Task Analysis.

Corporate and educational settings increasingly require decision-making, problem-solving and other complex cognitive skills to handle ill-structured, or heuristic, tasks, but the growing need for heuristic task expertise has outpaced the refinement of task analysis methods for heuristic expertise. The Heuristic Task Analysis (HTA) Method was applied to three settings to generate improvements and more detailed guidance, and to identify variations in the method for different situations. The three settings were group counseling, tutoring on writing skills, and selecting artwork for a product line. The formative research methodology was used to test the method and generate improvements. The three studies produced some common and some unique findings and recommendations. A tentative revision to the HTA method is proposed. (Contains 10 references.) (Author/AEF)