This presentation will delve into the topic of Student Personas and how to incorporate Student Personas to train and support faculty for the Online Environment.
Due to current events, higher education has had to transition to many classes online. This has increased the number of faculty teaching students in the Online Environment. Many of these faculty are new to teaching in this setting. These faculty members may not know how to translate over the skills used in the face to face classroom to this new classroom. By conducting trainings that focus on teaching in the Online Environment, faculty have the opportunity to increase their comfort level in teaching online. Specific training can be developed to cater to the different needs of the new faculty. One tool that can be used to help train faculty is the use of Student Personas. According to usability.gov (2019), personas have the ability to add a real-world element to any environment. By using Student Personas in faculty trainings, an environment can be created that mirrors interactions faculty may have with students. This environment has the opportunity to create a safe space for faculty to engage and practice working with Student Personas before they are actually in the online class. By having faculty engage with different Student Personas, this has the potential to increase a faculty member’s comfort level and prepare faculty to teach in the Online Environment.
This presentation will discuss how Student Personas can be used to train faculty to teach in the Online Environment. During this presentation, attendees will be asked interactive questions, engage in discussions with other attendees, and begin brainstorming how to create student personas to use at their institutions. A handout will be available to help attendees begin the brainstorming process. Attendees can expect to learn the following from this presentation: Understand the different ways Student Personas can be used in training, define what a Student Persona is, and summarize the process for developing Student Personas. After the presentation, attendees will have a framework to begin building Student Personas to utilize at their respective institutions.