Module 1: In Review
Before we move on ...
In this module, we emphasized the importance of viewing all design decisions from the learner’s perspective. With what you know about the target audience of adult learners, their potential skill and knowledge needs, and the adult basic education context, you are able to now contemplate how these factors will influence the lesson you are evaluating and redesigning.
Before we move on, please take a moment to fill in gaps by digging deeper to understand your learners, their needs, the context, and the lesson you have chosen to evaluate and redesign. Depending on the learning focus and activities in your lesson, you may find it necessary to tweak and fill in gaps with a persona. Remember, we develop our personas as a narrative. In the narrative, the persona has a name, a face (image of persona), and a story.
Learner Personas |
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Empathy Framework
The ability to identify with learners’ thoughts and feelings is a key quality of the instructional designer's process. The empathy framework (Kouprie & Visser, 2009) shown below will guide us as we consider our learners and their hopes, dreams, fears, circumstances, and what they want to accomplish.
To gain empathy for your learners, consider the personas within the context of the lesson you are evaluating and designing using the discover-immerse-connect-process shown above. Throughout your evaluation and design process, prompt yourself to:
- Discover: Raise your curiosity. Enter the world of these people. Explore and discover the people, their situation, and experiences.
- Immerse: Wander around in their world. Expand your knowledge about the people. Give them names. It is okay to be surprised by various aspects that influence their experience and circumstances. What may be their hopes, fears, and dreams? Be open-minded. Don’t judge. Get interested in their point of reference.
- Connect: Resonate with these learners as people. Call upon your own memories and experiences in order to reflect and be able to create an understanding. Make a connection on an emotional level with the people by recalling your own feelings and resonating with their experience.
- Detach: Step back and make sense of their world. Reflect as an instructional designer designing with the learner’s perspective on new insights for ideas to help them. What may they want to accomplish? What learning activities and delivery methods can be used? How can you provide opportunities for your learner(s) to engage in learning experiences and activities that can prepare them for the high school equivalency exam?
As we conclude this module, reflect on how you will use your personas, their needs, and context as you move on to the next modules where you will evaluate and redesign your instruction. Focus on the learning activities and delivery methods that you can design for your learners, the need, and the context. When in the Detach phase, consider how the lesson, learning activities, and delivery method choices reflect what your learners what to accomplish.