Organized Instruction in the Classroom

Task analysis, as a model for organizing lessons, is results oriented to the degree it obliges the instructor to concentrate on learning activities that are designed to facilitate acquiring skills and reaching learning objectives. Orlich, et al., describe terminal objectives as "what students finally should achieve after a series of planned instructional encounters" (2001, p. 170). Intermediate objectives, as the term implies, are what students achieve as they go through each successive encounter. Task analysis is useful in lesson planning because it forces the instructor to examine each objective, structure all objectives in a hierarchy of difficulty and interdependence (i.e., make an outline and/or flow chart), and devise activities and exercises that will enable students to acquire the skills for achieving each objective. Because some skills depend on the mastery of lower-level skills, the order in which they are addressed is important--which is why analyzing which are dependent on others is so important to the planning process.