Customer Reviews

Task Analysis Methods for Instructional Design

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This isn't an easy book to work through. It doesn't artificially simplify the field, doesn't give us the One True Method for task analysis, doesn't adopt One True Strategy for Instructional Design.

Instead, the book surveys a wide range of alternative approaches, provideas many references to different segments of the literature, and plenty of interesting insights.

I'm a Professor of Software Engineering (who also has a Ph.D. in Psychology). I focus my research on the teaching of software testing -- as a field, we are still in the early stages of curriculum development. The equivalent of a full semester in testing will soon be an ACM/IEEE requirement for a B.Sc. in Software Engineering, and so we need curriculum development in testing NOW. I find this book useful in my work and as a thought-provoker that I lend to my graduate students. It doesn't tell them what to do. It gives them enough information (and pointers) to help them think about why they should prefer one alternative over another.

The information contained in this book is very practical. Also, in contrast to some other task analysis books it is very readable. It does have some minor errors as another reviewer has pointed out. But I feel that the information contained is very good and I highly recommend this book.

Content is not well organized, the text is confusing and the publisher used the smallest font possible (I think they were trying to save paper, I couldn't believe they could print text that small:). The content could be useful, but the layout and design of the text is so user unfriendly it's a struggle to get through.

If you are put off by silly grammatical errors and absurd typos, then don't buy this book. It doesn't appear that anyone edited or proofed the material before it went to print. I bought the version that was copyrighted in 1999. I'm not sure what the authors were thinking, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't about their readers. I decided I could use it in my teaching, but probably not as the authors intended.

This book has been assigned as a textbook and it is one of the top 3 on my list of awful books in my lifetime of reading. It is full of errors and written with a dryness only a military procedure can match. It reads like a procedure to support systems training... another military wonder... and I bet this text was once used in training soldiers to become instructional designers. I cannot recommend this book to anyone in the modern world. The book was written in 1947 contrary to the recent publishing date.