Examples of Learner Personas and Empathy Maps
For my Masters program we analyzed a case study that included a lot of objective and subjective data sets that had been gathered from employees at a Logistics company. We then had to analyze the different groups of workers and begin to design a targeted eLearning experience for our chosen group.
The creation of “Learner Personas” and “Empathy Maps” is done with whatever writing tools you have (word processor, physical paper and pen, etc.). You will also need to ensure you analyze your work to prevent any type of personal biases - this is done by asking questions and collaborating.
For the project that I will discuss in the next couple posts, I focused on the “Socially Motivated Learners” group seen in Persona #1 and Empathy Map #1.
Persona Examples:
Learner personas can be challenging to create, a good resource to help you create Learner Personas can be found here: 4 Steps to Creating Learner Personas. eLearning Industry is a great resource for anything related to learning experience design and eLearning.
Below are my 2 examples of learner personas that were evaluated based upon the case study we were given. After the persona was created, I had to evaluate the information to determine how to address their prior learning experiences, attitudes towards learning, social/emotional needs, and barriers to learning. This information is incredibly important when creating meaningful and engaging learning experiences.
How to address this persona’s prior learning experiences, attitudes towards learning, social/emotional needs, and barriers to learning?
This persona's prior learning experiences are from in-person trainings (with interactions) prior to the switch to remote work. I would address this by ensuring that the ability to collaborate/discuss with others is possible for the learning experience to stick. Possibly by having a discussion board or by having small group discussions topics lead by their management team after all have taken the e-learning course.
I would ensure this group has the ability to socially learn, especially with others in their group to enhance their engagement and overall ability to remember the important information. I would also make sure that there is a solid feedback method that these learners could use with their leaders to know how they are doing.
The challenges for this group involved lack of feedback from leadership and the lack of social interaction in general. Ensuring that leadership is actually looking at results or participating in the trainings will allow those leaders to get the information they need to provide feedback to their employees. Encouraging weekly (or just repetitive) 1-1 meetings and group meetings with their team will also address a lot of problems this group has. If a training can be done in person with a collaborative group, that would be even better.
How to address this persona’s prior learning experiences, attitudes towards learning, social/emotional needs, and barriers to learning?
This persona's prior learning involves very flexible learning arrangements. I would ensure their e-learning experience would involve choices as well as self-pacing. Flexibility and different modes of learning are important to this group of learners.
I would ensure this group has the flexibility they need to address the work-life balance concerns. I would also want this group to have some interaction with their employees after they learn something new that affects them like communication. That way this group can get the feedback from their employees to understand what is/is not working.
This group is supportive of their coworkers/employees according to pg. 14 of the case study, but it is not clear if the coworkers/employees feel the same. It would be good to challenge the belief that their communication is clear and helpful by having them review employee responses. Challenging the perception of "already knowing something" might be important for leadership teams in general at this company. Once the communication issues are addressed, the trust that their employees are doing what they need to should be addressed as well. A fine line needs to be established between being a good communicator and micromanaging their team since that can be a negative experience that causes higher turnover.
Empathy Map Examples:
Empathy maps can be created however you like, and there are many different templates available online. Do a quick Google Search and you will find a lot of different examples as well. For my program I used the templates provided.
I will not be explaining how to create an empathy map as there is already a lot of information online on “how-to” create them. A resource I found quite useful when creating my Empathy Maps is found here: Empathy Maps by Nielsen Norman Group. Nielsen Norman Group is a consulting firm that focuses on computer user interface and user experience - both important topics to eLearning designers.
I called my first group (Group A: Carrier Sales Representatives) “Socially Motivated Learners”. The reason for this title is that the case study made it clear that this group really misses the in-person interactions with their peers as well as customers . A commonality among this groups responses dealt with the fact that they miss those interactions and wish that they could better utilize/understand the communication tools that they have access to . In the survey results this group also noted that their rankings of importance for certain skills are higher than their self-assessments of those skills. Another thing they mentioned is the need for feedback from their leadership team. They are a social group, they are motivated to improve their skills, and they are motivated by feedback from leaders.
I called my second group (Group F: Operations Managers) “Independent Adaptable Leaders”. The reason for this title is that the case study made it clear that this group is doing well adapting to the remote environment. The position itself requires a level of people skills, but I think the most obvious commonality is their need to be autonomous/independent in how they work. This position has a group of competitive people according to the case study, that alone can be a major motivating factor for those people. It also does not appear that they get much feedback from their leaders, however it is not indicated whether this is actually a problem due to their more independent nature.
The learner personas and empathy maps above are examples of two Learner Types that were analyzed for the project. Part of the process also involves analyzing your biases as you create these items. In the review of my personas and empathy maps, I noted that there were a few areas that bias could appear and reflected on those assumptions:
I mentioned that the first group may be described as Extroverted. That may not be a great label since the actual definition of extroversion may not truly meet the definition of the group in total. Sales Representatives in my personal experience are more extroverted but that is a personal bias. For the sales representatives that are introverted, they may not enjoy needing to come in-person for group trainings/meetings.
I listed the first group as motivated to learn new skills. This is not necessarily true for all employees in this group, it could just be a majority of them. If you do not take into account those who are not really motivated to improve their working skill set, you may forget to add engaging content with information on “why” they need to learn these new skills. Employees who are not motivated, and are not given good reason as to why they should learn something will likely stop enjoying their jobs as much over time.
For the first group, I also made the assumption that the group overall is not skilled with communication software. This could be a misunderstanding of what their needs actually are. These employees might just prefer in-person interaction, or otherwise feel that working
For the second group, I made the assumption that this group is skilled with managing their own work remotely. There was a specific comment from this group mentioning a possible lack of work-life balance. I did not initially take this into consideration and just worked on the assumption that this group is fully autonomous and doesn't need any assistance with scheduling or blocking out their work time. This could be a major issue, just because they are managers does not mean they are fully comfortable with their workload or how to better manage time. Adding on training to an already overstressed group will lead to burnout.
The second group was analyzed with the assumption that they are already comfortable with most of the online platforms they use. When reading non-manager responses it seems that communication and feedback are highly desired. If I did not take that side into consideration I might ignore the fact that communication skills are not just needed for non-management. The same issue goes for feedback, managers in this group may assume they are already doing everything they need to keep employees happy.
This first step really helps you analyze your learners prior to taking the time to create something engaging that feels relevant to the learner group.
The next step will be determining the learning objectives based upon the information that was gathered and evaluated - next post coming soon!
