Page 101 - Making Instruction Work

chap 8 3/4/97 3:43 PM Page 87

skill hierarchies 87

tant, but it wouldn’t matter which was learned first. This hier-
archy would look like this:

Figure 8.3

Describe features Drive car

If you know which skills are independent of one another,
you also know which sequencing options you could leave to
the student if you so desired. In addition, you have informa-
tion that will allow you to maximize course efficiency when
you don’t have enough practice equipment to go around.
When practice equipment is limited, you can let your hierar-
chy tell you what students can productively work on while
waiting their turn for the equipment.

How to Do It

1. Refer to the skills you derived from your task analyses.
These are the skills you wrote to the right of the task
steps that require them.

2. Delete the duplications from that list of skills. For exam-
ple, it is likely that you will have written “Can read
English” or “Can interview applicants” several times. If
the same reading skill or interviewing skill is referred to
in each instance, delete all but one of them. It makes no
sense to “teach” a skill once it’s learned.

3. Consider any pair of skills. Answer the question, Can
these two skills be learned in any order? If so, draw them