Resources for crafting effective learner profiles
Expanding on last week's post
Last week, I discussed examining learner goals for using a tech product and crafting learner profiles to better outline and understand those goals. This can help ensure that any training you develop reaches the needs of all learners.
I mentioned last week that I would be discussing how prior knowledge and training attitude can impact your training design. Then, I spent a few days traveling! So, I’m hitting pause on that post, saving it for next week, and sharing some helpful resources for creating effective learner profiles.
The “why” behind your learner profiles
Searching for learner profile resources (or learning personas, user profiles–there are many names) will garner you a lot of advice on outlining the basics of your learners: age, demographics, comfort with technology, etc.
The resources I’m sharing here instead will focus on helping you fully understand the why behind… well, why someone is using a technology. In my experience, this is tougher to discover because a user can’t always verbalize what they are trying to accomplish with a certain technology, while it’s easier for them to answer basic demographic questions.
Resources to get started
Creating personas for effective user stories: I like this video because it provides a template that asks you to clearly outline the “how” (how will a user use the technology?) as well as the “why.” Separating these two now can really help you when you are beginning to design your training!
Powerful questions for getting a deeper understanding of your learners by building empathy: I like this slide deck because it provides a long list of questions you can use to help better understand why someone is using a technology. These questions can help discover a user’s goal even if they’re having trouble verbalizing it themselves. In particular, I find these questions helpful:
What problems would this solve for you?
What would “good enough” use of this look like?
What do you think success in using this tool will look like?
What do you find most frustrating about learning a new technology?
What do you do when you feel stuck while learning a new technology?
Growth engineering learner persona template: I like this template because it includes space for learner skill gaps, training challenges, and current skills. This will tie into what I’ll (finally) talk about next week–considering prior knowledge and learner motivation. It has a section for goals, but I dislike that it doesn’t give guidance on how to reveal those goals.
Here, I’ve shared some resources for constructing learner profiles, specifically around discovering learner goals. Next, I’ll discuss how their prior knowledge and training attitude can impact your learning design.
Next week, I’ll address:
Learner prior knowledge and attitudes toward training
How this can impact your hypothetical user profiles
…How all this can impact your training goals and ultimately, your training content
Do you have any resources you’d like to share?
Comment below!
Thanks for reading and see you soon!