Lesson 3 The Learner and Instructional Design
3-5 Learner Personas
We cannot talk about the learner without really taking a moment to think about the range of learners that eLearning impacts. Every body is different, not all learners learn at the same rate or in the same ways. And some learners (more than you realize) have unique circumstances that are not ideal for participation in the eLearning.
One of the ways to anticipate the needs of learners is to go through the exercise of creating personas so that you can design effective eLearning for many types of learners.
- Connie Malamed, the eLearning Coach, wrote about Learner Personas for Instructional Design in 2009 and her work is still referenced by others.
- Karla Gutierrez provides The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Creating Learner Personas. (Jul 2013)
- Bianca Baumann talks about User-Centered Design Through Learner Personas. (Mar 2018)
- And check out the Open Data Institute’s learning personas to see the practice in action. (May 2018)
The point is that you have to think of different users when you are creating your eLearning even if they are all from the same organization. But, you do not have to create the personas in a vacuum; you can get input from actual users and create personas based on their characteristics. In other words, your fictional learner can be a mash-up of real learners from your organization.
⭐Shar’s Note: In general, I have 4 users in mind when I build courses in my day job and these users influence the design choices that I make. Here is the simplified version of my personas with the interventions.
| User | Characteristics | Interventions |
|---|---|---|
| Angel – Type A | Wants to work ahead. Not fond of group work. |
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| Bertie – Busy | Has pockets of time for school. Sometimes turns in late work. |
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| Lee – Low-vision and Language | Uses a screen reader. Needs simple English. |
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| Morgan – Mobile User | Limited internet bandwidth. Small viewing screen. |
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You may notice some of these interventions in the design of our course. 🤓