Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) in the Continuing/Higher Education Methods Using Games (CHERMUG) Project

Research methods and statistics are core competences across various disciplines but pose significant challenges for many students. The CHERMUG project aims to develop a digital game to support students in acquiring methodological and statistical expertise. A key issue that has to be addressed in developing a game is to identify the desired learning outcomes for students. The current paper describes a cognitive task analysis (CTA) which was carried out in the CHERMUG project to identify the component cognitive skills, knowledge and competences that are required in developing a comprehensive and usable understanding of research methods and statistics. Structured interviews were carried out with research methods experts. The experts were provided with a briefing sheet which introduced them to the CHERMUG project and the aims of the CTA. In a subsequent interview, participants were asked to describe a prototypical research problem and for this problem identify and discuss the most prominent and relevant issues and difficulties they experienced with their students in working on this. They were asked to consider these for the four main steps in the research cycle: research question, data collection, data analysis, and discussion & conclusion. This approach to CTA focused on the experiences of experts teaching or supervising projects in research methods and statistics and provided valuable concrete suggestions and recommendations relevant to the design of the game.