In the book we recommend using a combination of “Design Thinking” and “Backward Design.” More recently we came across the concept of “Liberatory Design” which is a similar process. Often, we create courses with a focus on the curriculum, but these methods begin with a focus on the learners. On pp. 36-37 we describe an activity to help articulate student perspectives called an “empathy map," and you can view that above.
Like most college professors, I do not know ahead of time who will be in my course, and this can be problematic because I want to tailor the courses as much as possible to the students in it rather than designing it for any random group of students. But here's my empathy map based on other first-year education courses I have taught recently and the demographics where I teach. The vast majority of my students will be 17-19 years old, female, and white but based on our student population, there is a good chance that quite a few will be first generation college students, LGBTQ, or neurodiverse. All or nearly all live on campus (required) and quite a few will have a part-time job. Most are planning to become P-12 teachers, primarily elementary teachers. They have enrolled in my course because it is the first course in a required sequence, but most will be genuinely interested, bright, and solid writers. They may still be suffering from the pandemic malaise I have witnessed in our incoming students the past two years. As this will be the first semester of college for the majority, they may believe that “success” in the course would mean getting an “A.”
Opportunities: freedom, the chance to meet new people and get out of their “bubble,” the chance to shed some aspects of who they were and start fresh Barriers: fears, fears, fears, and exhaustion and overwhelm But while the newness of everything can be a barrier, because this is the very first semester, they don’t have as many fixed ideas about how college is “supposed” to be and hopefully I can help them get off on the right foot and set them up for success. Composite personas As you can see above, we have a tendency to focus on the average student, the ones we’ve seen before, the ones that most closely fit our demographics. But designing a course for them alone would keep me from planning for the diversity, equity, and inclusion I value. Until I meet the students in my class and understand the many strengths and talents each brings, I am going to create a few “composite personas” to help me. These cannot be a substitute for actual humans but they can help make my planning more human-centered and inclusive of a broader range of perspectives and experiences. The following composites are based on institutional data and personal experience. Sasha is an 18-year-old African American female. She works part-time at our cafeteria. She had hoped more of the student body would be black, but at least she has found a supportive community through a friend who is a year ahead of her. She has a younger sister with severe physical impairments and so she has a passion for working with similar students in the future. JJ is a 20-year-old gay white male who took a couple of gap years before starting college. He has wanted to be a high school history English teacher for as long as he can remember but is now afraid that teaching might be a difficult profession for him given his devotion to diversity, equity, and inclusion and knowing that teachers have lost their jobs for mere mentions of anything related to LGBTQ+ individuals. Jackie is a 17-year-old white female who self-identifies as autistic. She took a lot of AP and dual-enrollment courses and so is starting her college career a bit younger than most. Other students are sometimes hesitant to work with her because she sometimes monopolizes conversations. Despite a history of high grades, she has never felt like school was a good fit for her, and finding workarounds has been exhausting. She has unusually interesting and innovative ideas, but her classmates have trouble seeing that. Lisa is an 18-year-old white female who considers herself first and foremost to be a conservative Republican. She is concerned about being in a course on “issues” because she feels that the course will have significantly more students who lean left than right and she wonders if she will be pressured. It also makes her uncomfortable that most of her classmates are from large cities while she is from a rural area. What will people think of her accent, her values? And as a first-generation college student, she is even less sure about what to expect. As one can imagine, my empathy map helps me think generally while my composite personas help me remember that I’m not teaching a homogeneous group but a room full of actual people with a wide variety of hopes and fears, strengths and challenges. As I plan, it helps tremendously to keep all these students at the forefront of my thinking so that I explicitly build in the means to ensure that all my students can flourish.
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AuthorI am Cynthia Alby and I am a full-time professor specializing in secondary and higher education at Georgia College, but I also write and present extensively on course design. I am co-author of Learning That Matters, and for more than 20 years I have taught faculty from across Georgia in a year-long program on teaching through UGA’s Louise McBee Institute for Higher Education. ArchivesCategories |