Analyze: Your Learners & Instructional Opportunity

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • Explore your intuitive ability to identify with learners’ thoughts and feelings – their hopes, dreams, and fears; their circumstances, and what they want to accomplish – as a key quality of the instructional design process.
  • Practice the process of empathy in design practice by following a 4-phase empathy framework within a visual thinking exercise.
  • Apply the empathy framework to discover, immerse, connect, and then detach with learner personas that will guide your instructional design process.
  • Reflect on how having empathy toward your learners will help you in your instructional design process.
  • Contemplate the reasons why adult learners desire to complete adult basic education.
  • Identify learner needs relevant to completing adult basic education courses and programs including possible problems that might affect the completion process.
  • Consider gaps in knowledge, skills, motivation, environment, and communication.
  • Reflect on how your own learning journey and the needs of your students might be different from your learners in order to understand your learners’ needs.
  • Name the general characteristics of the context in which the acquired skills will be performed
  • Describe the constraints and affordances of the instructional setting setting for adult basic education learners (e.g., online, in-person, blended).
  • Investigate sources and methods for obtaining more information about adult basic education students, testing situations, and instructional settings.

Topics

Topics covered in this module include:

  • Introduction to persona discovery
  • The process of empathy in design practice
  • The four-phase empathy framework to Discover, Immerse, Connect, and Detach
  • Introduction and validation of six personas specific to adult learners representing our target audience of learners
  • Introduction to adult basic education (ABE)
  • Identifying types of learning gaps
  • Designing for adult learner needs and wants
  • Considering how your learners might be different and similar to you
  • Instructional and performance contexts
  • Instructional design is an iterative process
  • Identifying and bridging gaps

Context Summary

In Module 1, we will consider the importance of empathy in the practice of instructional design. Why do designers want to identify with their learners through empathic design? Descriptive facts and figure about learners may not be informative to the instructional designer (i.e. really help the designer to understand the learner). Critics of traditional methods in design have called for new approaches in bringing the customer (the learners in instructional design) into the design process. In addition, we will consider why adult learners pursue adult basic education, and reflect on their needs and the instructional context that are key elements of the design process. We will also explore how instructional design is an iterative process where information (learners, need, and context) is synthesized and interpreted to inspire ideas.

Relevance to Practice

In the design literature, there is a consensus that understanding and focusing on the end user (the learner in instructional design) during the design process is essential to the success of the final product. This persona discovery helps us to understand and focus on the learner and is an ongoing activity throughout the design and development process. Personas are intended to make the learner “real” to help designers develop empathy for the learner, and to use the empathic connection to view all design decisions from the persona’s (i.e. learner’s) perspective. Contemplating the needs of your learners will help you to better understand the motivation of your learners, which will help you to design better instruction. Persona discovery and understanding the need and context are ongoing activities throughout the design and development process. Instructional designers view all design decisions from the learner’s perspective, which is made richer (rooted in real-life, informative, and engaging) by the need and instructional and performance contexts. Understanding and focusing on the learner, need, and context during the entire design process are essential to the success of your instructional project.

Key Terms

  • 4 phases of empathy – Discover, Immerse, Connect, and Detach
  • Empathic design
  • Persona discovery
  • Empathy
  • Visual thinking
  • Adult Basic Education (ABE)
  • General Educational Development (GED) Test
  • Learning Gaps
    • Knowledge Gaps
    • Skills Gaps
    • Motivation Gap
    • Environmental Gap
    • Communication Gap
    • Entry Skills
  • Prior Knowledge of Topic Area
  • Attitudes toward Content and Potential Delivery System
  • Instructional context
    • Traditional learning context
    • Contemporary learning context
    • Face-to-Face
    • Online
    • Blended or hybrid instruction
  • Performance context
  • The iterative design process

Module Design Credit

License

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Instructional Design Service Book Copyright © 2016 by Designers for Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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