An instructional challenge is a difficulty or obstacle that hinders students as they attempt to achieve a specific learning outcome. Instructional challenges can be motivational, cognitive, or even logistical in nature. Identifying the instructional challenges that arise in a course is the first step toward devising a teaching strategy or implementing a learning technology that can help students overcome those instructional challenges.
The inventory below will ask you to rate various instructional challenges on a scale ranging from "not a problem" to "a big problem." In many cases, it will be easy for you to decide upon a rating. For example, if a given instructional challenge severely afflicts all of the students in a course, it is likely "a big problem"; or if it afflicts only a few students, it is likely closer to "not a problem." But with some instructional challenges, it might be harder to decide. For example, if a given instructional challenge afflicts all of your students, but afflicts each of them to only a small degree, does that make it "a big problem," "not a problem," or somewhere in the middle? In such cases, I would suggest that you be guided by your instinct: if it feels like a big problem, it probably is, and if it doesn't, it probably isn't.
As you respond to the twenty-eight questions in the inventory below, feel free to skip over any question that doesn't seem applicable. As well, if a given instructional challenge is a big problem in one of your courses, but not a problem in another one of your courses, answer from the perspective of the course where it is a big problem.