Congratulations! You made it to the last week of the course. Your hard work will pay off as you synthesize the work you have done throughout the course into the Signature Assignment. This final assign

Analyze a Task

ID 5000: Fundamentals of Instructional Design

Introduction

It started with the postal services, then the telegram, the telephone, radio to television and then the email. The internet is now booming, with social media being used by close to a third of the world's population. But it is a fact that social media is essential during this era. With technology advancement, social media can be used to automate results and suggest a popular trend or get to know a consumer's real thoughts about a product (Guenzi & Nijssen, 2020). Too much use of social media, however, has its downside in as much as it plays the most crucial role in connecting people around the world. Studies and academicians have taken different stands concerning the use and effect of social media in our day to day lives. With some positive results and others negatively affecting students, teenagers, and even working adults, different authors put their thoughts into what they stood for.

Social Media Utilized as a Task

It has been researched that the media affects everyone in society, whether they are active on social media or not. The impact, however, can be directly or indirectly felt. Both positive and negative effects are felt by students, entrepreneurs, the aged, teens, and even employees, given that they can choose what they want from social media (Guenzi & Nijssen, 2020). As others pursue information and connection, others seek to advertise and let their opinions known. In the education sector, social media plays a significant role in exchanging ideas as well as learning new things. Students can also learn from various sources or get taught by experts. Teachers also post assignments and class exercises in these sites while employers look for who to hire and employees, where they want to work. This is important when using social media sites.

Impacts of Social Media

In another study, the positive impact of social media in students was relatively low. The adverse effects included interfered productivity. A student may want to study but might spend hours in other non-educational sites. To others, it was more of a waste of time where students spend money in cyber cafes and on data bundles to check out the latest trends on unproductive sites. Despite this, students would prioritize socializing for academic purposes. With all these playing a role on a student’s performance, grades and focus may be affected.

Analysis of a Task

Task analysis is recognizing the critical elements of any given work. It lies in understanding the skills and knowledge needed to make sure the job is done well with the best outcomes. It generally takes a specific look at the discrete unit in work performed by an individual. It tries learning about users by observing them work to fully understand how they perform their tasks to achieve their goals. In the learning need developed in week 2, workers will learn and get trained on how to use new computer data software, Microsoft 2020. We will look at workers learning the new software and what steps and skills are required from the workers using precise language and breaking down every task into its main primary components. The main reason for task analysis is to refine and redefine the training and teaching methods to support user-friendly or centered software with deeper insights into the user's goals and what they are trying to achieve (Ulrich, Boring, McJunkin, & Rege, 2019). With this hierarchical task analysis, workers will be trained on using Microsoft 2020, with the overall task being the users accomplishing goals as seamlessly interacting with the software and using the various applications within the software to meet their goals. The workers will also maybe learn how to apply the use of software in everyday life. This will allow a change to take place in the organization.

Prerequisites Required for the Workers

The prerequisite knowledge required for the workers will be a computer or a phone, the software to be used, which can be in either a disc or stored in a flash drive. Prerequisite skills include those as reading skills for learning the fundamentals of using computer data software (Guenzi & Nijssen, 2020). As for system requirements, having the most up-to-date web browser is as crucial as having a good and fast internet connection. It will enable the users to manage their Windows Explorer and cloud effectively. The users will also get to understand the main components of a computer, the role the programs, apps, and operating systems play, and how to manage the program. By the end of the training, a user will be more familiar with Microsoft 2020 and perform essential and advanced functions using the software. Despite this, a wrong decision would mean a costly mistake with a lot of lost time, resources, and money when it comes to software. Thus, it is essential to know and implement the right system to save money and time.

Process Steps of Task Analysis

However, in becoming familiar with the software, there are steps a user must take. As the first and necessary skills are knowing how to start and operate a machine, it is also vital to have the machine installed. Being a collection of applications, Microsoft 2020 can be used for a couple of things, such as making presentations, writing word documents, drawing and deducing charts, and complicated mathematical calculations. Step one, therefore, will be having the software installed on the computer. Step two will be the user knowing how to navigate the software. It includes starting the software and knowing what commands do. Step three will be the user prioritizing requirements and functions to the value they bring. For this, it could be managing the workload and being able to create presentation folders. It could also be it automatically saves documents and files. Focusing on functionality and features will bring the most changes and values. Though the system automatically saves files and documents, knowing how to access the files from cloud storage is also essential, and so can retrieving and or editing these files. Step four will be using a free trial if there is one to evaluate the system's functionality and features. It is also essential in testing efficiency as the system ought to achieve all the set tasks using the least number of steps. If it does not meet the user's requirements, a user may opt to change to another software. Step five checks the software's quality and depth and whether each feature fulfills the worker's requirements. It also looks at whether it gives the desired outcome and should not miss stored data or essential functions (Guenzi & Nijssen, 2020). The fifth and final stage is gauging the learning curve. As these are workers who will be using the software, this will be the ultimate test as to whether the software is functional or not.

Conclusion

It is essential to consider time and money when it comes to training staff. Notwithstanding, such software offers subscriptions that help users better share documents and files, they enjoy an up-to-date software with various other added advantages. There might also be newer functionality to the service offered, which may suit a user's needs, but the ultimate goal is whether the software fulfills their desired goals. It is important to view the functions when analyzing a putting together a particular task.

References

Guenzi, P. & Nijssen, E. J. (2020). Studying the antecedents and outcome of social media use by

salespeople using a MOA framework. In Industrial Marketing Management, 1(90), 346-

359.

Ulrich, T. A., Boring, R. L., McJunkin, T., & Rege, A. (2019). A visualization

approach to performing task analysis of time series event log data from a microworld

simulation. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

Meeting 63(1), 1867-1871.