How a task analysis is used to
teach people to work
A task analysis is a process of organizing an activity into teachable steps. When the steps are identified, strategies are developed for teaching the worker the task. It is easier than you think to write your own task analysis! Tomorrow morning when you are making your coffee, write down the steps that you follow. If you are like me, you will soon be asking yourself how many steps should I be writing. For example, you could write:

1. Fill the coffee pot with water.

Now that might be enough information for you to understand, but you could write more steps to help someone else.

1. Turn on the water.
2. Fill the coffee carafe with water.
3. Pour the water into the coffee pot.

Now you have broken the task into 3 steps. This might be all that someone else needs to set up the coffee pot. We will write a few more detailed steps.

1. Get the coffee carafe from the coffee pot.
2. With your right hand turn on the cold water faucet. The cold water faucet is the one on the right.
3. Fill the carafe with water until you reach the 6-cup line.
4. Turn off the water faucet.
5. Pour the water in the carafe into the coffee pot.

Now we have five steps instead of one!

It is time to develop our strategies for teaching someone else to set up the coffee pot. If the learner is someone you have never worked with before, you will need to use trial and error methods to determine how much assistance they will need to make the coffee. Natural cues might be all the learner needs. You ask them to make coffee and they complete all the steps on their own. The natural cues are: the coffee pot, sink, water and coffee. The learner responds to these cues by completing the task. By trial and error you found out you do not need a task analysis. If the learner needs help in measuring the coffee, you could write a few steps for that part of the task.

Good luck with writing your task analysis. There are many books available in the library that contain examples of complete task analysis. Also use a search engine and look for keywords.

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