Instructional Design Analysis For Sales Training

Purpose of Design

Instructional design describes about the professional and systematic developing of deploying of educational training. Organized instruction planning are widely recognized and existed as a primary toll for institutions for training as well as instruction.  The term instruction design was occurred in USA in the mid 20^th century. In the beginning, instruction design was known as instruction technology. The advent of instructional systems development refers to systematic application of practically created learning systems based on knowledge.   The instructional technology refers to integration of instructional design and instructional systems development which leads to formula “Instructional technology = Instructional systems + instructional system development (van Merriënboer, 1997). However, instructional design covers the whole development process of instruction planning as well as its deployment in various educational settings.

The advantage of instructional design includes implementing specific instructional treatment, wider usage of construction and planning of instruction setting, optimal evaluation of results in a instructional program, clear requirements of maintenance as well as management of the instructional program within short period of time, effective instruction design leads to proper evaluation, upgrades, processing all important stages of instructional design in economical development. The instructional design representation states to most extensive definition of instructional technology. Instructional design encompass training process covering several degrees of scope, for instance,  instructional design  in educational process covers lesson, curriculum, program , system and its unit of instructions.  The construction and deployment of complex programs and systems may take months or even years of instructional design which is referred as large-scale instructional design at the macro stage. The design of instructional design in educational institution focuses on lessons, which takes weeks or hours of instruction in the meso-level. While the micro stage of instructional design focus on sections of a lesson, for example, its illustrative examples and exercises (Driscoll, 2000). At the meso-level, the instructional design framework comes into play and they are widely employed at the meso-level. However, based on the requirements of instructional design for any instructions may fluctuate the meso-level and micro-level. An efficient instructional design should not focus on pure organization or planning of instruction and not constrain instructional technology to hardware as well as software. Environmental factors such as learners must be considered and its relevant factors should be incorporated in accordance with a systemic approach.   Now-a-days, instruction design in education must involve adaptive design planning, and educational institutions have seen an increase of brilliant students who should learn cognitive skills and apply them into complex real-world settings and contexts (Tennyson, Schott, Seel, & Dijkstra, 1997). It is evident that instructional design encounter new challenges. Therefore, effective and reliable instructional design frameworks must be developed according to scientific as well as societal demands.

This instructional design’s task description is to increase the sales of the heaters at the retail shop that had arrived newly but the sales were not up to the expectations. The retailer is under a serious competitive pressure for positioning them under cutting edge technology. They try to get the high turnover. Many staffs are very young but inexperienced. So training is required to have a complete study regarding the product features and the new manager has interest to train the staff members. The manufacturer representatives are very highly knowledgeable and they come forward to train all the staff members.

Types of Needs and Data Sources

After going through all the taxonomies, this paper is analyzed with the help of Gagne taxonomy. This is due to the Gagne’s comprehensive outcomes that could be implemented to encapsulate the learning outcomes described by the task. This taxonomy strikes a good balance among the simple leveled classifications to the higher level classifications. It also gains certain intellectual skills that a learner should attain. Information processing model has also been utilized, which could involve all the external as well as the internal factors that make the learning tedious. This is an important point to be considered since it could focus the reception and attention to learn new things through their application (Andrews, & Goodson, 1980). This has been formulated in the table mentioned at the Gagne taxonomy section of this paper. Through this learning outcome bigger task is broken into smaller tasks that help in fulfilling the task description. Moreover, it is necessary to know the type of need that is required and the sufficient knowledge should be attained from those needs (Baker, 1973).

For operating and planning a needs assignment one has to know about the 6 identical categories of needs. This could help the designers in classifying the needs based on their criteria and estimate the information type.

The need could be detected by comparing the target with the national standard. A normative need persists when the sufficient norm is more than the population of the target performance. Normative need could require their functionality with the normative data. The instructional designer work is to group the data collected from the specified targets and compare those data with the norms once the norm is defined (Banathy, 1968). Manufacturing, sales and the safety data is often provided in the company newsletter, databases, and the reports. Moreover, this need is applicable to the national level test.  When it comes to sale normative need checks the safety data collected by the company (Barson, 1967). Each and every specification should be given by the company while selling the product to the metropolitan area. It is necessary for the heater to have the national standard record for their safety operation.

This is similar to the normative needs but here the target audience status could be compared with the status or the measure of external factor. Here the retailer should compare themselves with the competitive company as opposed to a norm. Retailers could compare their annual turnover, salesperson salary with the other retail store (Committee of College and University Examiners 1956). This needs persist when there is a gap among the groups. To detect the comparative needs, the area to be compared should be identified first. Here Management development, sales, product could be compared (Harrow, 1972). The current status data of the heater is collected. Next, it should be compared with the competitive audience. In business environment, comparative need is highly tedious. Due to the government antitrust regulations and the proprietary nature of information, these discussions are not advisable between various companies. The instructional designer should gather the knowledge from the candidate who has the capability to gather all the information from the newsletter and other possible ways regularly. Once the comparative need is identified, the designer should take concern regarding the training need as opposes to a status need.  

This need is extremely important in the sales department since it focuses on the individual desire and improvement that has to be considered for their efficient performance. This could express a gap among the current performance and desired performance. According to this need, the designers should find their needs in order to improve their performance and their requirement that are motivated by their desire (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964). In the retail place the designer should sufficiently identify the individuals who are interested to learn more by the training program. If an individual is sufficient enough to explain well regarding a product, it could attract the customers to gain them. Felt needs could be detected from an individual by questioning and interviewing them. The best way to attain this is to have a face-face interview. This could alleviate anxiety and gain more additional needs (Institute for Higher Education Policy 2000). If the individual is able to express their ideas through the paper then questioning them could be effective. The designer should separate the needs based on the management problems and their training system. 

When a felt need is turned to action then it could be known as the expressed needs. A survey has stated that people is ready to pay in order to attain their expressed need. This need finds the manager to have an interest for their employees to attain certain course that could enhance their capability. Data for this expressed need occurs from various sources. The performance reviews of an individual record could be either in the form of expressed or felt needs. Though it affects the privacy of an individual from viewing their records, designer could suggest the manager for gaining the individual performance reports. This need could be best identified by the suggestion boxes and in-house publication with the suggestion column.

The means of anticipating the changes that could occur in the future is termed as anticipated or future needs. Finding these needs should be a part of the planned change as the training could be conducted based on the implementing changes. This is similar to the felt needs but additionally it could require certain questions regarding the future and the anticipated factors that could have an effect in the job (Niegemann, Domagk, Hessel, Hein, Hupfer, & Zobel, 2008). Another approach is to know the potential problem areas. This analysis could make the maintenance staff to get the training knowledge on replacing and repairing the components of the heater.

This could be the failures that could have a rare occurrence due to certain disaster or chemical reaction. These needs are detected by knowing the potential factors that causes the problem.

In 1987, Reiser developed instructional design and was widely accepted. However, Reiser mentioned that instructional design planning commenced in the early 1920s. As stated, Tyler and Pressey in 1922 and in 1926 were the first to develop instructional design. Tyler developed “objectives for learning” while (Paas, Renkl, & Sweller, 2004) developed teaching machines which were major contribution of instructional design.      

The objectives for learning by Tyler (Tyler, 1922/1949) focused on instruction and built systematic planning of instruction. In 1940, rapid development of instructional design including instruction media as well as training programs for the military (Seels, & Glasgow, 1990).  General objectives of instructional design in the field of research and development:  

• The learners should be trained within a short period of time.  
• Employing reliable instructional means such as written instructions as well asdemonstration films and practical exercises).

During the Second World War, the Division of Visual Aids for War training of the U.S.A office of education generated many training handbooks and films to train the soldiers. This was the first major development of instructional design and its success in professional research and development. In-order to enhance the intellectual characteristics of human being, structured learning plays an important role. Through the methodology of differentiation, recalling, and transfer of learning, a human moves forward from one point to next point of development and adopting cognitive skills to its full extent (Gagné, & Briggs, 1979). Instructional design developers ensure that they are experts in this methodology in their purest forms and spend more time in analysing them (Simpson, 1966). There are more cumulative effects that arise from the consequence of discrimination, retention, and transfer over a period of time within the nervous system of a given individual should be given more importance which leads to this question:

What is it that is learned, in such a way that it can function as a building block in cumulative learning?. The question was solved by Gagne in the year 1965, he stated that a predefined group of learned capabilities which posses unique characteristics from each other such a way that classes of human performance and their  requirements of various conditions for their acquisition (Glaser, 1966). The fundamental notion is that what is learned by adults and by children creates complex rules. Normal rules are learned when other capabilities known as concepts which must be learnt previously. Based on the availability of particular discriminations, the learning of concepts can be mastered.

In the case of human being, multiple discrimination need previous learning of chains, specifically which includes verbal mediators, (Seel, 2003) and these chains form a easier  learned capabilities which  contributes and known as associations. Later, associations were also called as Stimulus-Response(S-R) connections (Seel, & Dijkstra, 2004).

The process of obtaining of what is learned leads to notion that all these kinds of capabilities which are learnt and that each of them are heritable under various external conditions. By hypothesis, each of them is also learned under different internal conditions; the most major of these being what the individual already has available in human memory (van Merriënboer, SEEL, & Kirschner, 2002).

It is evident that associations, although they fill the position in this scheme, are not learned very frequently by adults, or even by 10 year olds. Mainly this is because they have already been learned a long time ago. In contrast what the 10 year old learns with great frequency are rules and concepts The crucial theoretical statement is that the learning of such things as rules and concepts depends upon the recall ability of previously learned discriminations, chains and connections

As discussed by Gilbert in 1992 which states Taxonomy is a system of categories or classifications that are used for purposes of organization, conceptualization, and communication.

The Learning outcomes of the Gagne’s taxonomy premeditated the role for supporting the developers in handling various learning schedules with the step by step instructions. Having the taask characteristics infuence, but not focusing on psychological processes proceeded by the learning content and form. (Gagne, 1985) identified various categories based on the intellectual skills: Concepts, discrimination, higher order rules and problem solving. He projected that these knowledge types are in a requirement, vertical transport relationship, with discrimination prerequisite to solving the problem. Gagne classified learning outcomes into five categories or taxonomies. These symbolize the diversity of capacities or ending that is probable as a result of the learning process.

Table 1: Application of Gagne’s taxonomy in “Educating the staff members to gain the knowledge of new model heater”

Skill	Description/Example
Discrimination	Making different among the old version of heater with the new one. Different responses should be made with the different inputs. Nichrome: It is an ideal material used in several heaters since this has high resistance and forms a layer of chromium oxide, which could prevent oxidation. Resistance-wire: The heating element could be in the form of ribbon, wire, straight or coil type. This could be highly used in toasters, industrial furnaces, dryers etc. This includes Cupronickel: It allows low temperature heating PTC ceramic: They have only positive temperature coefficient and most ceramic materials having negative thermal coefficient could make a non-linear responses that makes an increase in resistance once the threshold temperature is attained. This could allow the current to pass through once the thermostat is cool and stops once it’s hot thus saving electricity.
Concept	The ability to respond in a single way to all event or class members. Seeing the necessary resemblance among a class of objects, people, or events, this calls for a single response. Pelonis Technologies manufactures the heater based on the Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) made up of specialized discs, which enables sufficient heat transfer to the smaller pieces. This is made up of the advanced ceramic material and it also uses Thermistor that could have a rise in the resistance once the temperature increases. There are 2 types of PTC Thermistor: Silistors: This could offer linear characteristics that utilize silicon as a conductive material. Switching type: They are non-linear where they have a decrease in the resistance until certain temperature is reached then the resistance increases. They are said to be the self-regulating heaters that has been implemented in various PTC sensors and various devices.
Higher order rules	This could tend to say about the heater that tends to have a superior quality when compared to the other. · This is an automated heater that could make the material to act as its own thermostat by switching it on when the water is cool and off once it’s hot that tends to save the electricity. · Provides faster response · No risk when it has overheating.
Problem solving	This helps in combining the lower level components and combining all of them into a new one. Trial and error method could be adapted once the problem is found.

This is an internal progress where the staff members could limit their own way of learning and thinking

• Employing their own-selves in self-testing to make a decision regarding the knowledge they require.
• In order to gain knowledge regarding a domain, they should know the sort of questions they should arise during their training schedule.
• Make a mental model of a problem.

Skill	Description/Examples
Labels and facts	This response could be either hand written or vocal type. This involves in gaining a response to certain inputs. The response could be a group of facts or citing them. PTC elements consist of PTC Thermistor and aluminum strips joined by brazing or gluing.
Bodies of knowledge	Elaborating a huge body of consistent facts.

This could involve the bodily movements such as gaining knowledge regarding the operation of heater. It also helps us in gaining knowledge regarding the things to be done when it is in a non-working condition.

An internal state which affects an individual’s choice of action toward some object, persons, or event (i.e., call to action). It also makes a choice to exhibit cheerful, friendly and positive disposition in appropriate situations for a staff member.

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