Trends in Emerging Technologies

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Why Use a Learner Persona?

In response to significant workforce reductions of 25% and a rapid shift toward technical senior leadership, my government agency’s information technology (IT) organization has prioritized educational technology training to reskill and upskill remaining staff. Due to diverse roles and different digital skills, pinpointing training needs is challenging. One of the best methods to determine training needs is to use learner personas. Organizations often employ learner personas as a tool to understand a customer or user group’s experience (Weinhandl et al., 2022). Learner personas offer a structured method to identify and address diverse learning needs across roles. By capturing motivations, skill gaps, and preferred learning styles, personas help instructional designers align technology solutions with real-world learner profiles. Learner personas are developed using interviews, surveys, or performance data. The information from these techniques enables the instructional designer to analyze trends to assist in the development of personas. The instructional designer would need to reevaluate the data regularly.

Creating a Learner Persona

Audience: IT government contract officer representatives (CORs) and budget analysts at my agency requiring reskilling and upskilling due to workforce reductions and the agency’s priority for knowledge of emerging technologies.

Development of Learning Persona (Template):

Walk-through of Creating a Learner Persona:

Creating learner personas is exciting! It all started with planning where you are headed. Golden (2022) stated that instructional designers should begin with envisioning a journey map before creating a persona. The journey map has six steps: awareness (how employees learn about the courses), consideration (how the course addresses their needs), action (steps taken by the employee), experience (enrolling in a class), repeat (signing up for another class), and loyalty (continuing to take courses and recommending them to others). I started by identifying CORs and budget analysts as needing training in emerging technologies. I focused on building two profiles to represent the two positions, and I leveraged the course’s recommended template to create two learning personas: Jill, an IT COR program manager, and Kevin, an IT budget analyst.

Once I understood my plan, I started creating two learning personas using this week’s recommended template. Golden (2022) explained that there are five critical steps for creating a persona: naming the personas, identifying the personas’ goals, determining the personas' needs, identifying the personas’ pain points, and identifying the personas’ personalities. Based on Golden’s (2022) information, I used the course’s recommended template to create two learning personas: Jill (representing the IT COR program manager) and Kevin (representing the IT finance program manager).

First, I started by building Jill’s profile. Jill is a 33-year-old deaf employee. She needs accessibility tools such as interpreter services to perform her duties and to get access to educational technology training. Jill has degrees in math and finance and has been an IT COR for four years. She is motivated by her religious faith (she wears a hijab). In addition, she enjoys traveling. Also, she wants to become a senior manager, and she needs more AI training as part of the IT senior leadership push for more technical employees. However, she gets frustrated when accessibility tools and interpreters are unavailable. The instructional designers need to recognize that access to learning is essential in educational technology. Rose (2014) argued that people should have access to learning no matter their situation, such as their economic status, place of residence, or disability status (as cited in Baldwin & Ching, 2021). In fact, the instructional designers must ensure Jill and others with disabilities have access to learning as required in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Specifically, Section 508 of the law requires that IT be accessible to everyone.

Second, I created Kevin’s profile. Kevin is a 58-year-old IT finance program manager. He has degrees in physics, accounting, and business. He is a very forward person, a military veteran and former police officer, and he refers to himself as a “numbers guy,” possibly because he is motivated by money. He needs more in the new acquisition and accounting systems and additional IT refresher courses. Kevin is most frustrated with the chaos and confusion caused by the reduction in force. In addition, he lacks patience with employees and managers. Based on Kevin’s profile, he will need straightforward training with clear instructions.

For best results, the profiles should be reevaluated regularly, and instructional designers should check for any new trends. Lastly, if necessary, another persona should be developed to address any emerging challenges not currently addressed.

References

Baldwin, S. J., & Ching, Y. H. (2021). Accessibility in online courses: A review of national and statewide evaluation instruments. TechTrends, 65(5), 731-742. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00624-6

Golden, M. (2022). Customer Experience: Creating Customer Personas [Video]. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/customer-experience-creating-customer-personas/start-with-a-journey-map?autoSkip=true&resume=false&u=41907252

Weinhandl, R., Mayerhofer, M., Houghton, T., Lavicza, Z., Eichmair, M., & Hohenwarter, M. (2022). Personas characterising secondary school mathematics students: Development and applications to educational technology. Education Sciences, 12(7), 447.

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