Where are your e-learning “personas”?

Recently I took part in a seminar and followed up by reading Alan Cooper’s “The inmates are running the asylum”. The key concept to extract was the use of “personas” in the interaction design.

The concept of having personas is not new to educators but most have not labeled them that way. In most instructional design we spend a significant amount of time addressing the learner and learning styles. So what is new about using personas? It makes them tangible and thereby sharpens our goals.

We can talk about learners in the abstract just like the traditional user interface designer talks about “users” but the minute that the interaction designer or instructional designer created a persona, one we can call by name and perceive as totally real, our entire view changes. Consciously and unconsciously we will do things to “users” that we will never do to our motivated student Lucy, or Sam who needs an extra hand as he struggles with myriad of issues.

What it boils down to is our getting past learning styles and users to humanizing our design. How we move this from interaction design to instructional design is still something to be looked into by Cooper has certainly raised the bar for designers and educators.