Summary: A Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) identifies performance gaps within an intended audience. There are a multitude of ways to collect quantitative and qualitative data for a LNA. You have plenty of experience (probably even an expertise) with conducting LNAs for your students.
I’m trying to write more about topics that teachers aspiring to be instructional designers should know. It’s a struggle to try to translate the K-12 classroom experience to a corporate setting. They’re so different in so many ways. Yet that’s the challenge that teachers have to overcome when they’re applying for instructional designer roles.
In this post, I’ll explain what a LNA is, what it looks like in a corporate setting, and how you already do it as a teacher.
Note: Learning Needs Analysis and Training Needs Analysis are often used interchangeably. Some people don’t consider them to be exactly the same. I’m not going to get into the specifics there. I use LNA because it’s my preference.
What Is a Learning Needs Analysis?
According to snhu.edu, a LNA is “the comparison of the current skills and competencies inside an organization against the skills required for the company to succeed.” The goal of a LNA is “to identify gaps in the skillset of the current workforce.”
All proposed projects should start with a LNA. For instructional designers, a LNA is the primary component of the Analyze phase in ADDIE. At a minimum, it should help you determine:
- the intended audience
- the business problems or performance gaps to address
- the knowledge, skills, or abilities (KSAs) required to perform the tasks
- the recommended courses of action
So, ultimately, the output of a LNA is a recommendation on the courses of action to help a particular audience learn KSAs that will solve business problems or performance gaps. Pretty fancy term for such a common sense idea, right?
Ideally, a LNA would confirm that a learning experience or training course is the correct solution to the business problems or performance gaps. Then you could move to the next phase of your project.
What Does a LNA Look Like in a Corporate Setting?
As an instructional designer, you’ll be approached by a senior business leader or a Subject Matter Expert (SME), and they’ll say something like “We need a training course for X topic.” Then naturally, you’ll ask “How do you know that?” To which they might reply “Because I said so.” Just kidding HAHA. I hope that doesn’t ever happen to anyone. More realistically, you’ll start a dialogue about why a learning experience or training course is needed, and that’s where a LNA comes into play.
The LNA, like all parts of your project, will be a collaboration between you and the senior business leader or SME. Together, you’ll run through a checklist of questions that will clearly define: the intended audience, their characteristics, and expectations; the business problems or performance gaps of that audience; the set of KSAs they need to learn to perform their tasks; and the recommended courses of action to address the learning needs.
The LNA will require both quantitative and qualitative data. Some of the data you’ll already have, some you’ll need to get from the senior business leader or SME, and some you’ll have to collect additionally. Here are a few common ways to get the data:
- HR or LMS reports: These might be performance reviews, exit interviews, and learning activities (e.g., online courses completed or ILT sessions attended).
- Observations: You can follow a rubric and document what you see. Just approach this delicately… you know how it feels to be observed by your principal.
- Self-assessments, surveys, interviews, or focus groups: Sometimes the best way to identify the learning needs of your learners is to ask the learners themselves. Go figure!
- Work samples: This could be anything that employees produce in their roles.
There’s a lot of variability when it comes to how different companies, teams, or projects conduct their LNAs. What you’ll find is that the more time and effort you invest into the LNA, the better defined your learning solution will be. You might even find that learning or training isn’t the solution for the problem!
How Do Teachers Do It Already?
While you probably don’t call it a LNA as a teacher, I guarantee that you’ve done every part of it already. These are the things you determine during your “teacher LNAs.”
- The intended audience is the students in your classroom. Whether it’s less than 10 students or more than 30 students or somewhere in between, you’re still responsible for meeting the learning needs of each individual student. And you have multiple classes a day, and each one of those has their own classroom dynamic.
- The performance gaps you have to address are your students’ proficiencies evaluated against learning objectives, department/district benchmarks and standards, Common Core State Standards, etc. You know what proficient looks like in your subject area, and you know where each of your students is in relation to that.
- The KSAs required to perform the tasks are outlined in your scope and sequence as you map out each unit for the school year. As the school year progresses, your students learn more and are able to do more. That’s the hope at least.
- The recommended courses of action are all of the instructional decisions you make on a daily and weekly basis, from what activities will best help your students achieve the learning objectives to how much time to spend on each one.
The ways that you collect quantitative and qualitative data during your teacher LNAs significantly exceed anything that an instructional designer, senior business leader, or SME does. Here’s a short list to illustrate:
- Formative and summative assessments: All of the student work that you evaluate during the learning process and at the conclusion of the learning process gives you a close pulse to where your learners are at and where the performance gaps are. Your students demonstrate their learning to you on a daily basis.
- Classroom observations: The interactions between you and your students and between themselves provide you with plenty of qualitative data about their learning needs. It could be that confused look on their faces when you introduce a new idea. Or it could be the vocabulary they use to teach each other. Those observations give you instant real-time feedback to adjust your methods.
- Historical student learning data: You have access to your students’ past class grades and standardized test scores (or someone in your school district does). You can also talk to their other teachers and past teachers as well. This historical student learning data helps you understand what academic successes or challenges your students are coming to your classroom with.
You spend 180 days a year with the students in your classroom. By the end of the school year, you’re going to know them very well. It’s not just their proficiencies and performance gaps related to LNAs. It’s their personalities, family lives, social lives, extra-curriculars, and everything else too.
There you have it. A LNA compares the current KSAs of an intended audience to the required KSAs for their success. It identifies the performance gaps and recommends the courses of action to address the learning needs. In a corporate setting, there are a multitude of ways to collect quantitative and qualitative data for a LNA. As a teacher, you’ve done every part of a LNA– and to a higher degree– than any instructional designer, senior business leader, or SME would be expected to do.
Tyler Banh 