Mtg 24/36: Mon-31-Oct-2022

Outline for Today

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  • spending extra oh I like it can see the offer that I didn't get all the things, conversations still makes it into toxic understanding, feel bad That's totally what I wouldn't have had a chance to share is that in my earlier career, I didn't like communications
  • and so I conducted usability studies. Where Oh yes, I sometimes I forget these things. So I'm happy to just answer questions and the students seem to sort of share their marketing as well. But from a needs analysis perspective, which will often come up because I just want to get rid of I'm happy to refer to you more.
  • Thank you good so it's 930 now, so should we start? Yeah. Okay, good morning, everyone. It's 930. Monday, October 31. Happy Halloween. So if you're good, and if you're not so good, but they make hits I get tonight in my house. There'll be chocolate on Wednesday, I'm sure. Anyway, without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Christy Schulz, who's director of the Center for Continuing Education. She's going to talk to us about personas.
  • Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm using the mic so you should be able to hear me even at the back of the class today. And as noted, I'm here to talk to you a little bit about personas and specifically how we use them in continuing education and I would say in development of university programs quite broadly. I will share with you to begin a presentation that I've delivered now at Dean's Council at Faculty of Science Council, which is where this invitation came from faculty of arts leadership team and a few other places. And so the hint here will be for you to listen for my use of personas in this presentation. It takes about seven minutes to go through the content here connected to understanding adult learners. And then I'll be happy to talk with all of you about the ways in which we use personas to think about program development and program design in continuing education and higher education and I know just enough to be dangerous about persona use in web design and marketing. So I'm really happy to talk to you about those things as well though that will be a little bit of a stretch from my current experience though. Not so far away from some of my past experience. So today, and this is where I'm going to go into the mode of pretending that I'm talking to you specifically about adult education but you'll catch the piece about personas in a few minutes. So today I'm going to talk to you about defining the adult learner and making a case for specifically this would be in the context of the University of Regina for an adult learner recruitment plan. Acknowledging that in universities, most of the effort is spent thinking about the traditional undergraduate learner and to a degree to a lesser degree, the graduate student but many of our students most of our students at a university are undergraduate learners. And so I think we often think about the 18 to 22 year old. So in the context of this presentation, some of what I'm going to talk about is connected to the university's recent student journey mapping project which was designed to craft a request for proposals, an RFP for a new student relationship management system. And in that context, there were probably a dozen personas that were actually used. And so this will shed help shine some light on what adult learners need. To begin, I'll share spend a little bit of time talking about some of the definitions we use to think about adult learners or non traditional learners in other contexts, and how we might want to consider those learners here in the University of Regina context. I'll then share a few data points as to sistex which you might find interesting. And then I will look to some opportunities that I think the university has, and this will of course, leave plenty of time for questions in both the presentation that I get to deal with council Science Council, etc and also here. So first step, defining adult non traditional learners. So believe it or not in Canada, we don't have a consistent dish definition of the non traditional learner or adult learners across the country. We sometimes have definitions of these province by province, but nothing that is a national definition. So I'll take a moment to define some of what the US uses to define a non traditional learner. So these are learners who delay enrollment, that is do not enter post secondary directly from the same calendar. They finish high school. They attend part time for at least part of the academic year. They work full time, 35 hours or more. They are considered to be financially independent for the purposes of determining eligibility for financial aid. They have dependents other than a spouse. So usually children in this case, but sometimes older adults or parents or other family members and and or they do not have a high school diploma. So within the scope of this definition. So this is sort of starting to in the context of this presentation a little bit beyond the curtain here. This is where some audience members or people like you who might be listening about adult learners are going to start to think about these kinds of individuals. So within the scope here 75% of all learners in the US in undergraduate degree programs would actually have one of these characteristics. So if like me, you might wonder why we use the term non traditional and I don't have an answer for that.
  • A few other definitions and these might be a little bit more connected to what we use here at the University of Regina. learners who would be 25 years or older. Those who returned to post secondary education after a break from schooling have gained entrance through something like PLAR or through other experiences. PLAR is Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition or have completed a program or degree and now re enter to pursue updating our second area of academic study. Probably worth noting that these kinds of definitions are used when thinking about undergraduate students in particular, because most of these characteristics would apply to graduate students that I know there's some graduate students in the room today. So the adult learner at the University of Regina, for the purpose of talking about adult learners here, I'll ask you to think about those who are 25 and older, with some attention to those who are working part time or full time or maybe returning to school after a break. So non direct entry from high school learners. Here's, here's the time for the fun facts and I'm not sure if you'll be able to see this all the way at the back of the room but here at the U of are those who are 25 and older we've had on the credit side. In the 2021 fall census state 38% of our overall students are over 25. So the proportion of our students who are over 25 has been growing little by little year over year. Here at the you have our students are more likely 65% to be employed. This is out of 2020 data and compared to 56% So not a huge difference but a little bit more likely and where I live so on the other side of the lake, in continuing education, almost all of our learners are over 25. So perhaps not very surprising. Mostly we're offering programs for for those who are seeking career and professional development. So what does this mean for the University of Regina, and just a heads up in about 30 seconds we'll get to those personas. Broadly speaking, I believe that we can continue to build upon the strengths that the University of Regina already has, and the ways in which we're already serving adult learners. But perhaps we can do so just a little bit better and perhaps be a little bit more intentional in our recruitment. So before being able to think about some of the opportunities. I'll share a few observations with you. And I'll invite you to consider a couple of learners and their personas. So number one, consider a 28 year old single mom living in swiftcurrent Who would like to begin an undergraduate degree for the first time. She is currently working and not able to move to Regina, but she does want to become the first in her family to finish a degree. She is also motivated to inspire her daughter or to consider a 35 year old man who has completed two years of his bachelor's degree before getting a good job in the resource sector. His career has plateaued and he has noticed that those who are promoted in his sector and elsewhere all seem to have degrees he would like to complete his degree while continuing to work. So now I can shift into thinking about some observations about what adult learners really want. And in the context of the research and there was some of these things might not be surprising. It's worth stating. Adult learners want flexible open access. So admission without traditional entry qualifications, which is something we do very well in continuing education but something for us to think about in the degree world, flexible modes of study including online and part time options, and broadly continuing education opportunities, including microcredentials, seminars, certificates and other shorter programs. In addition, adult learners when surveyed will say they want clear and easy to understand admission. Program and cost requirements. They will say they want Student Services and advisor access outside of normal business hours and they want ultimately to earn their degree and they want to see people like them and so the longer information on they want the degree they want to see represented in university marketing materials and recruitment materials. Students who look like them who have stories like there's so thinking about a working mom or someone who is in their 30s Who wants to go back to school and they want to see those kinds of things.
  • A few other definitions and these might be a little bit more connected to what we use here at the University of Regina. learners who would be 25 years or older. Those who returned to post secondary education after a break from schooling have gained entrance through something like PLAR or through other experiences. PLAR is Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition or have completed a program or degree and now re enter to pursue updating our second area of academic study. Probably worth noting that these kinds of definitions are used when thinking about undergraduate students in particular, because most of these characteristics would apply to graduate students that I know there's some graduate students in the room today. So the adult learner at the University of Regina, for the purpose of talking about adult learners here, I'll ask you to think about those who are 25 and older, with some attention to those who are working part time or full time or maybe returning to school after a break. So non direct entry from high school learners. Here's, here's the time for the fun facts and I'm not sure if you'll be able to see this all the way at the back of the room but here at the U of are those who are 25 and older we've had on the credit side. In the 2021 fall census state 38% of our overall students are over 25. So the proportion of our students who are over 25 has been growing little by little year over year. Here at the you have our students are more likely 65% to be employed. This is out of 2020 data and compared to 56% So not a huge difference but a little bit more likely and where I live so on the other side of the lake, in continuing education, almost all of our learners are over 25. So perhaps not very surprising. Mostly we're offering programs for for those who are seeking career and professional development. So what does this mean for the University of Regina, and just a heads up in about 30 seconds we'll get to those personas. Broadly speaking, I believe that we can continue to build upon the strengths that the University of Regina already has, and the ways in which we're already serving adult learners. But perhaps we can do so just a little bit better and perhaps be a little bit more intentional in our recruitment. So before being able to think about some of the opportunities. I'll share a few observations with you. And I'll invite you to consider a couple of learners and their personas. So number one, consider a 28 year old single mom living in swiftcurrent Who would like to begin an undergraduate degree for the first time. She is currently working and not able to move to Regina, but she does want to become the first in her family to finish a degree. She is also motivated to inspire her daughter or to consider a 35 year old man who has completed two years of his bachelor's degree before getting a good job in the resource sector. His career has plateaued and he has noticed that those who are promoted in his sector and elsewhere all seem to have degrees he would like to complete his degree while continuing to work. So now I can shift into thinking about some observations about what adult learners really want. And in the context of the research and there was some of these things might not be surprising. It's worth stating. Adult learners want flexible open access. So admission without traditional entry qualifications, which is something we do very well in continuing education but something for us to think about in the degree world, flexible modes of study including online and part time options, and broadly continuing education opportunities, including microcredentials, seminars, certificates and other shorter programs. In addition, adult learners when surveyed will say they want clear and easy to understand admission. Program and cost requirements. They will say they want Student Services and advisor access outside of normal business hours and they want ultimately to earn their degree and they want to see people like them and so the longer information on they want the degree they want to see represented in university marketing materials and recruitment materials. Students who look like them who have stories like there's so thinking about a working mom or someone who is in their 30s Who wants to go back to school and they want to see those kinds of things.
  • I know that you're just scratching back there, but it looks like you might have had a question No, it's not a question at all. So perhaps I will open up with a question that you might be able to respond to for me. First of all, just a show of hands. How many of you noticed when I used personas in talking about adult learners? So good, most of you, most of you notice that? What did it what did the use of personas in the context of thinking about making a case for supporting adult learners? What did that do in your mind? When I arrived at that persona moment where you were saying so it helped to help visualize? Yes, so just so for everyone at the back can hear that. So it helped to clarify what I'm saying and to visualize the kind of person that I was talking about anything else? Yes.
  • Probably needed more religion, because we would know that kind of person was a minor difference.
  • Yeah, excellent. So more relatable because you might so I'm just repeating for those at the back so more relatable for because you might know someone like that so you can you can imagine their experiences. Anything else about what that what that moment was like for you?
  • Okay, all through a second question your way. So, I'm trying to imagine how you might be thinking about personas in the context of software design, software design, right? Primarily. Computer science so computer science writ large, perhaps with software design, more specifically, but how might you use personas in your work or in the kinds of work that you might do in computer science? Yes, at the back.
  • So in that sense, you will find a lot of use cases a lot of people of different age groups or people or different culture groups, and that's the way to achieve performance.
  • Yeah, so that those use cases and understanding the the variety of possible users. Excellent. Anyone else on that? Yes.
  • So when we paid our empathy maps, which is what like a user would think feel, say and do you have to sort of create a persona like what kind of user are we pretending to be when we use the software and what do we
  • That's very cool. Okay. I've never heard the phrase empathy map before. And I love that, indeed, to be able to imagine what they think feel do and say Is that Yeah, so indeed, anyone else for how you would think about personas in in your work and computer science?
  • I think the default is to design for yourself. Right? And not to stop what other modes of interaction are out there to power other people?
  • Yes, I'm gonna going to pick up on that for a second. So thinking about you know, you often think about yourself, one of the things that is an interesting conversation that comes up periodically in higher education, whether you're, you know, a faculty member, or you know, a PhD student and you're teaching for the first time is that we're often we often forget that we're not teaching ourselves so imagining those experiences, but so we might not always want the same kind of teaching experiences that we had. Though. Most of us I will say, try to imagine designing a class designing learning experiences drawing on the best of experiences that we had, but still, often remembering who's in art who's in our classroom is different than the classrooms that we were in ourselves. So. So I think that's, that's a really good point. So not just about yourself. Now, if you're thinking about thinking about the design, I'm curious just to hear from you about needs analysis and personas and how those might come together. Needs Analysis is something we think about in in learning design. It's something we think about in web design in program design, but I'm curious to hear from you about. So I'm setting the table to say that there is a relationship between needs analysis and personas. But how might the two be related? Yes,
  • for designing software, know what arbitrators are about the user's interest and difficulties. So for understanding that and making personalized the habit process of gathering requirements This is used for knowing the person making the requirements
  • making. Excellent, excellent and yes, the gap requirements gathering is another phrase for needs. analysis needs analysis in my world requirement gathering in your world indeed, other ways of seeing those connections.
  • Okay, I'll leave you with one more question and then I'll turn things back. If you want to throw in any more questions or throw questions my way? What are some of the challenges of Persona design? What have you encountered or when you're thinking about the opportunity to create personas? What are some of the things that you need to keep in mind? What are some of the challenges? Yes.
  • Understand the persona per se, so like more or less sympathetic perspective, so we think we understand the persona. So I guess we have to enter our users
  • interesting, this hat. So just for I'll repeat for those at the back so that you might not really know you might want to have that sympathy that understand that empathy map, but you might not really know what that person is about because you might not know them. Yeah, that's a interesting challenge. Yes.
  • So related to it. He said. We had a presenter who was colorblind. And so I would have no idea what a colorblind person would think when they look at something like it might not be accessible for them, but I would not be able to tell. So that's why like really doing said you have to interact with people and understand like, what are those struggles that they have when you're building this
  • person? Yeah, indeed, those kinds of those accessibility challenges are probably some of even so in learning design, as well. Probably some of the most challenging to consider and think through is if you if you can't, it's beyond just imagination, but if you are not colorblind, you're not going to be able to have that experience. So you have to learn more about it. Indeed. There was a comment at the back as well. Yes, yes.
  • Everyone's wanted me to get on satisfy everyone. So yeah, that's
  • yes, indeed, there it is very likely that they're, you know, we're at what 7.5 billion people on the planet and growing so probably not, we're probably not going to be able to imagine all 7.5 million billion people in our persona design. So, so part of what you're hinting at here is being able to narrow to some of those key personas that then stand in for and represent a large group, which might mean that you're missing out on my personal lived experience, but hopefully, you're thinking about a persona that is going to capture enough of my experience, if I'm one of your intended audiences and one of the intended users of the software or their computer design so I'll pause now to see if I should turn things over after some questions.
  • I was curious how
  • the most common data use or
  • identify people the characteristics from or how the same characteristics?
  • Yeah, I think for within, that's a really great question. So the personas and in thinking about that, the degree that I mentioned that, you know, online available degree, we have that actually about half a dozen different personas that we've outlined there. And those come from stories and are sort of anonymized and compiled so group together, have stories that our student advisors have heard. That's so the true answer the reality is that they've come from decades of experience in student support in the continuing education field. And yet, because it resonates with the data that we do have, in terms of some of the characteristics of those who come for degrees after you know, in their 20s or 30s. It resonates and it matches. If I were to move forward with something that was even a little bit more formal. I would want to do that through some with some data as well. As some of that storytelling from the advisors experience. Characteristics versus students
  • and one of the things I was wondering whether it is related to non traditional non traditional
  • Yeah, and I think some where the definition is defined nationally in the US, there's absolutely work being done on that. So you know, there are, you know, I'm not sure which characteristics but say 40% have three or more of these characteristics. So some of that work is being done. But, indeed, I do think that many people in higher ed today, still imagine when we're thinking about undergraduate students, because we hear this still imagine an 18 year old who's graduating grade 12 as the student who's coming into first year university and, and data and these kinds of definitions helps to dispel that myth. That is still you know, the 18 year olds are still really important learners. But the I do think that it is important to think beyond just the what we used to think and I think that's where part of the use of personas can help is to think beyond what is a default mode of thinking for for many people. So I've got a couple of good questions that have come from back any questions from the class?
  • I suppose a lot of like, a lot of what you have to do is a little bit of guesswork, because like I fall pretty firmly into those categories, but you wouldn't know which ones is.
  • Like you, you have to take some guesses as to who's out there.
  • Yeah, and some of the data that we do have come there's the Canadian university student consortium, I think is the what Kaskade stands for, and they survey students and students in their first year, then they do a middle of your survey than they do have a final year of survey. So some of that comes from data, but it's survey data. So it's not population data. I think that I think you're right, I think and this sort of picks up on the question is, do we have interviews? And I think that doing interviews, especially in research, but also in program design, or software design, I think interviews can be incredibly helpful. And then further on in the process. The kinds of work that you might experience in a usability study by recruiting people who have those kinds of characteristics actually try things out. And this is perhaps we perhaps do that more in software design or web design than in, you know, a university degree design. We don't just recruit people to try it out. But we might want to have conversations about does this really work for you have our if our assumptions been correct, because there are going to be assumptions made along the way as even even with survey and interview data. So So I think it's yeah, it's important to keep thinking and to test assumptions whenever possible. Yeah,
  • apart from the ones we discussed, do you face any challenges when developing these personas?
  • Any challenges while developing the personas? Probably the limit of imagination and experience. So beyond data, interviews, conversations with staff who've interacted they're still I still am sensitive to that. That blind side, that not understanding because it's outside. It's too far outside of either my experience or the experience of people that I work with or the data. And that's a little bit of futurist thinking there. There may be students who we don't know about because perhaps they haven't presented themselves to us just yet. But I think one of the challenges and one of the things to keep asking is, who have I missed and what have I missed? Because I think that that does happen. And I think that it's worth being. It's worth being aware that that does happen. It's worth being aware that there still might be things that even with just enough expertise, there's still gonna be things to think about. So, and with software design that could really matter. Thinking about accessibility in software design. I think there are aspects of that that really require extra effort and extra wondering about what what have I missed? Yeah, great question.
  • I was curious
  • how many people would say
  • fit under one of the characteristics you say you're not
  • Yeah, so. So yeah, well, we can just do one at a time. So how many of you have started your university degree? Not directly from high school with at least a one year break. So a couple How many of you attend part time so don't have full time status? Yeah, so we've got part time. How many of you are working full time? Few. How many of you are financially independent for financial aid eligibility purposes, which is a bit of a you know, so your Yeah, so some of you have dependents other than a spouse, so children or other people in your family that you're taking care of? Yep. Few and how many of you don't have a high school diploma and have been admitted on other grounds? I'm here so how many of you have at least one of these characteristics? So in this room, my quick math here is probably about a third. A third of you would be defined as non traditional, which I can't consider a badge of pride. So I've been a non traditional learner many times in my life. But certainly, these multiple characteristics do do absolutely matter, and often do impact our experience. I know in just thinking about the students who are in the graduate course that I'm teaching right now, many have families. I would say most are working. And a graduate program has a little bit of a few different characteristics than an undergraduate program and I know many of you are in an undergraduate program right now, but but it does shape even the way that I would experience my teaching. So something characteristics of you know humans really do matter. I may have taken that in a slightly different direction.
  • Any other comments? Let's thank our speaker again. Thank you
  • all for the engaging conversation. I really enjoyed presenting to you and thinking alongside all of you today and I will turn the computer back over to you. Thank you very much. You're wonderful. Have a great day. Everyone and happy Halloween Okay, so how many recognize she was wearing a costume for Halloween like the batch yeah to start. But I don't know what it is. So what are you talking about? Users they take the tenant password off the tenants Right? But that's also for makes sense why you don't really get afternoon. possible we should do
  • something after seven
  • days later.
  • Okay, so I took off the password so that the fact that I'm there then forgetting to clear the passwords off the rest of them. So, Norman had a discussion so we can distinguish between slips and mistakes. So the one hand if we know what is required, but we don't we don't execute it properly. So okay, I know what I have. That's a slip. But then if we're in a situation where it's not clear where we get stuck and
  • we don't know what the proper way to resolve the situation is. Then that's a mistake. And that's that that's a design issue. If there's a slip, it may not be so much about the design. It's just
  • we did it. We did something wrong and renewable. We did and we can correct.
  • So what So going back to our topic so how does understanding users help us to? To deal to catch design problems. So the more specificity we can have an understanding users
  • the more we can we can take on their perspective. Yeah, I'm gonna give you
  • an example when I was teaching. Also students are actually both perspectives and they can identify problems with their left distributors. And just
  • because it's basically the students they have the way they expected to teach. That just doesn't fit in with our students so looking
  • at teaching material from a student's perspective, it's important not case because we can we can now empathize more easily with students. So the idea of personas we can help prove your craft personas to represent students in labs that might help the lab instructors who are to remind themselves about what it's like to be a student
  • that I know catch your drift your meaning and your comment. So the idea is that we're writing a detailed, detailed description of a representative user. So then we can test our assumptions against our detailed description. Say if we have a single mother who wants to go certificate or degree so it would be good if we can have conversations of people who are who we imagined would be users of our interface. So the persona isn't a particular person. We're not describing somebody's personal details have enough detail that we can say oh, this is a thing in the front row. We don't want to single out people but want to include a variety of features from the number of people who represent this particular kind of user we have in mind and we might have different personas representing different parts of the population. So first project installment we're asked you to look at
  • a few activities occasionally.
  • He recruited members could look at an activity and possibly a different user. So for the second part, I want you to focus on one category of activities one activity, one user so the user can make that connection if that makes sense he went going up for Halloween night I dress with this
  • candidate children's event in restaurants for work
  • I saw somebody get on the elevator she described it was a great red gown and a black wig. And then we have one costume the other costume
  • in the Haunted Mansion dress is that
  • sure. Anyway let's leave it there for today.
  • sure. Anyway let's leave it there for today.

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