The Presentation focuses on the Learning Need Analysis in nursing education field.

1. Learning Need Analysis
Siddeshwar Angadi
Lecturer
CMC

2. INTRODUCTION
• Need assessment is the basis from which all instruction and
learning activities take place.
• Need analysis involves identifying gaps or deficiencies.
• Learning needs can be described as internal forces that
motivate the learner to pursue a goal that bridges the gap
between one’s present level of competence and the desired
level of performance.
• Teaching and instructing involves meeting the needs of
students and trainees.

3. DEFINITION
• Learning need is defined as gap in knowledge that
exist between desired level of performance and the
actual level of performance
– (HEALTHCARE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, 1985).
• A learning need is the gap between what someone
knows and what someone needs or wants to know.
Such gaps exist because of a lack of knowledge,
attitude or skill.

4. SIGNIFICANCE
IN
EDUCATION

5. • Learning needs must be identified first so that an instructional plan can be
designed to address any deficits in the cognitive, affective, or
psychomotor domains.
• Once it is discovered, what needs to be taught, a determination can be
made about when and how learning can most optimally occur.
• Not every individual perceives a need for education. Often learners are
not aware of what they don’t know or what they know. It is up to the
education to assist them in identifying, clarifying and prioritizing their
needs and interests.
• Once the needs are identified, it helps the educator to set objectives and
plan appropriate and effective teaching and learning approaches for
education to begin at a point suitable to the learner rather than from an
unknown or inappropriate place.

6. STEPS
IN
ASSESSING THE LEARNING
NEEDS

7. Steps…
1. Identify the group (Need) : first identify the number of students,
whether it is a group or one. If it is a group, find out if it is the felt
need of the majority.
2. Choose the right setting: establishing a trusting environment will
help learners feel of a sense of security in confiding information.
3. Collect data about the learner
4. Collect data from the learner: learners are usually the most
important source of needs assessment data about themselves.
5. Involve members of the healthcare team: nurses are not the sole
teachers and they must remember to collaborate with other
members of the healthcare team for a richer assessment of
learning needs.

8. STEPS…
6. Prioritize needs:
identified needs can become endless and
impossible to accomplish. Maslow’s hierarchy
(1970) of human needs may help the educator with
prioritizing.
6.1 Criteria for Prioritizing learning Needs
• Mandatory
• Desirable
• Possible

9. STEPS…
7. Determine availability of educational resources: A need may be
identified, but it may be useless to proceed with interventions if
the proper educational resources are not available, are unrealistic
to obtain, or do not match the learner’s needs. Educator would
work immediately on obtaining the necessary equipment for
future encounter.
8. Assess demands of the organization: The educator should be
familiar with standards of performance required in various
employee categories, curriculum objective in case of academic
learning.
9. Take “time” management into account: Time is an important
factor in learning. Learning is time bound.

10. METHODS
TO
ASSESS LEARNING NEEDS

11. The following are various methods that can be used to assess
learner needs and should be used in conjunction with one
another to yield the most reliable information
(Bastable, 2003 & Haggard, 1989)
• Informal Conversation
• Structured Interview
• Focus Groups
• Self-Administered Questionnaires
• Tests
• Observations
• Patient Charts

12. CONTD.. METHODS
• Informal Conversations:
– Often learning needs will be discovered during
impromptu conversations that take place with other
health care team members involved in the care of the
client, and between the nurse and the patient or his
or her family.
– The nurse educator must rely on active listening.
– Nursing staff can provide valuable input about what
they perceive to be their learning.
– Posing open-ended questions will encourage learners
to reveal information about what they perceive their
learning needs to be.

13. CONTD.. METHODS
• Structured Interviews:
– The structured interview is perhaps the most common
form of needs assessment to solicit the learner’s point of
view.
– The nurse asks the learner direct and often
predetermined questions to gather information about
learning needs. As with the gathering of any information
from a learner in the assessment phase, the nurse should
strive to establish a trusting environment, use open-ended
questions, choose a setting that is free of distractions, and
allow the learner to state what are believed to be the
learning needs.

14. Contd..
• Focus Groups:
– Focus groups involve getting together a small number (4 to 12)
of potential learners (Breitrose, 1988) to determine areas of
educational need by using group discussion to identify points of
view or knowledge about a certain topic.
– A facilitator leads the discussion by asking questions that are
open ended to encourage detailed discussion. These groups of
potential learners in most cases should be homogeneous with
similar characteristics such as age, gender, and past experience
with the topic under discussion.
– Focus groups are ideal during the initial stage of information
gathering to provide qualitative data for a complete assessment
of learning needs.

15. Contd..
• Self- Administered Questionnaires:
– The learner’s written responses to questions about learning needs can
be obtained by survey instruments. Checklists are one of the most
common forms of questionnaires.
– The educator’s role is to encourage learners to make as honest a self-
assessment as possible. Because checklists usually reflect what the
nurse educator perceives as needs, there should also be a space for
the learner to add any other items of interest or concern.

16. Contd..
• Tests
– Giving written pretests before teaching is planned can help
identify the knowledge levels of potential learners
regarding a particular subjects and assist in identifying
their specific learning needs.
– Also, this approach prevents the educator from repeating
already known material in the teaching plan. Furthermore,
pretest results are useful to the educator after the
completion of teaching to determine whether learning has
taken place by comparing pretest scores to posttest scores.

17. Contd..
• Observations:
– Actually watching the learner perform a skill more than once is an
excellent way of assessing a psychomotor need. Are all steps
performed correctly? Is there any difficulty with manipulating various
equipment? Does the learner require prompting? Learners may
believe they can accurately perform a skill or task (e.g., walking with
crutches, changing a dressing, giving an injection), but the educator
can best determine if additional learning may be needed by observing
the skill performance.
– Learners who observe themselves performing a skill that is videotaped
can more easily identify their learning needs. This process is known as
reflection on action (Grant, 2002).

18. Contd..
• Patient Charts:
– Physicians’ progress notes, nursing care plans, nurses’ notes, and
discharge planning forms can provide information on the learning
needs of clients.
– The nurse educator needs to follow a consistent format from chart to
chart so that each chart is reviewed in the same manner to identify
learning needs based on the same information also, documentation by
other members of the healthcare team.

19. THANK YOU