Hi and welcome to a presentation on context analysis. A context analysis is similar to
a learner analysis, expect it looks at the context of the course. What does that mean?
It includes a variety of considerations, such as program and department expectations, the
schedule of the course and the location of it, the class size. All of these different
things are a part of what we would call the context of the course. There is a worksheet
that we put together that lists a variety of contextual factors. It asks you to think
about how these apply to your course and then how does that impact your course design. I'm
going to look at a few contextual factors, just to give you an idea of the things we
think about with the context analysis and then let you be able to go off and work on
this on your own. Since we know courses are usually taken as part of a program or maybe
more than one program, where does this course fit into the program or programs, and what
would be the implications for your course design? Where does it fit in? We think about
does it fit in to the first year, second year, third year, fourth year? Is it a course that
is limited to one of those years or can a fourth student come back and take this class
in their fourth year even though it is a 200-level course? How do these things impact your course
design? What previous knowledge do the students come in with? This ties back to a learner
analysis, but there are lots of things you want to consider. Do you expect everyone there
to be at the same level or will you have a wide variety of students. Other examples of
contextual considerations. How many students are enrolled? How would this impact your course
design? It could have a big impact on the assignments that you want to give, maybe the
type of activities you do in class. When it comes to assignments and exams, maybe you
want a lot of written answers, but maybe that is not going to be feasible if you have 300
students. Do you have the support to be able to grade things like that? Another consideration:
what does the room look like that your class is in? Can the seats be moved around? Can
students work in groups easily? If not, are you not going to have group work or are you
going to find other spaces for the students to work in groups? Another consideration:
how long are the class sessions? When you look at a class, you might teach it one way
if it is three 50-minute sessions a week versus if you had one three-hour block. If you have
it in a long three-hour block, you definitely need to think about things like breaks, getting
the students to be able to move around throughout that class. Something like department policies.
When putting together your course, you might think "ah, well, I want to use journalling,
I want to use short answer assignments, I want to use some multiple choice assignments,"
and then you think about "oh yeah, but my department says I need a 50% final exam."
Can you fit all those things in with a 50% final exam? You have to keep in mind these
policies of your department, that is part of the context that your course exists within.
Another one could be common assessments. What I mean by that is, say for example that your
course is part of five different sections of the course. Say it is MATH 110 and there
is MATH 110 from one instructor, from another instructor, from another instructor, from
another instructor. Is the department going to ask all you to give the same assessments,
give the same final exam? Yes or no, those are things you need to consider when putting
together your course. And that will impact a lot of different things that you do in the
term. A big one that maybe we don't think about enough is how, when, and will the students
apply this learning in the future? When we think about the actual course, we think
what is the real point of this course, what is the real meaning of this course? And once
we have that figured out, we know when the students will use this information and how
they will use this information. Once we have that in mind, that can help us go forward
and write appropriate learning outcomes which will then have us design appropriate assessments
and then appropriate learning activities. Thank you for watching. If you want to go
through a context analysis, please feel free to use the chart referred to previously.