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The Story Of Front-End Analysis
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ROOTS B.F. Skinner and his colleagues laid the basis for a science of behavior with their work and publications. Skinner et al focused us on the idea that behavior has a cause, is lawful, and is subject to systematic influencing. Thomas F. Gilbert in his now legendary article, "The Mathetics: The Technology of Education" in the Journal of Mathetics, 1962, broke ground in the application of an engineering approach to development of instruction. He has continued to point the way in Performance Technology with his subsequent works, including Human Competence: Engineering Worth Performance, 1978. In the mid 60's many of us toiled to apply and further build on the work of Skinner, Gilbert and other pioneers. We had success at causing learning, but less success in changing JOB PERFORMANCE. We saw the necessity for deriving training content out of a rigorous analysis of performance. The now well-known Performance-Based approach to training was born. Basing content of training on a study of job-performance was not a new idea, but was not wide-spread among the training developers. (And unfortunately, is not universal today.) EMERGENCE oF FRONT-END ANALYSIS In spite of performance-based content, we continued to experience problems getting trainees to use the skills/knowledge on the job. Follow up evaluation revealed a number of reasons: Too long interval until opportunity to practice the Skills/Knowledge; inadequate tools/equipment in the job situation; lack of feedback; insufficient time given; poor work design; effort exceeded the reward, and many more. In the late 60', some practitioners (notably consulting firms such a Harless Performance Guild) began to take a "front-end" look at problems and needs of the performers before training development projects were undertaken. That is, if analysis at the "back-end" showed non-skills/knowledge barrier, why not anticipate the difficulties before time and money were spent on training? "Front-End Analysis" as a formal term and manifest as a performance problem-solving procedure first appeared in J.H. Harless' An Ounce of Analysis (Is Worth a Pound of Objectives) in 1970. Ounce was the summarized version of Harless' " Performance Problem Solving Workshop" developed in 1966. Robert Mager and Peter Pipe proposed a similar procedure in Analyzing Performance Problems in 1970. The Praxis Corporation's Performance Analysis Workshop" in the early 70's received wide implementation and emphasized the economics (Worth=value-cost") of taking a front-end look at problems. The two workshops (PPS" and PAW") and the Mager/Pipe book generally credited with broadening the field of Training Technology to include Front-End Analysis/Performance Analyses/Needs analysis phase. The techniques and concepts birthed the beginnings of Performance Technology. Dr. Joe Harless For any questions, comments, concerns, work requests, or to schedule in-house workshops please send email to: doug@dougmead.com, |
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