Empathy Mapping
Bea Jimenez; Rachel Goc; Jean Clipperton; and Jonathan Diehl
Introduction
Often, we design our courses as if we were the students. But this approach can lead to gaps. Empathy mapping is a tool that helps identify the different types of students in our courses by creating personas. Using these personas we can identify their needs, goals, expectations, behaviors, pain points, and more.
What is an empathy map?
Empathy maps are a way to articulate what you know about a persona – their needs, goals, expectations, behaviors, pain points, and more. They are quick, rough templates that cover broad areas of what a person might be thinking, hearing, saying, saying, and feeling.
In this workshop, we’ll be creating empathy maps for different personas of students.
What does empathy mapping have to do with UDL or course design?
Creating empathy maps helps us consider the course experience from the students’ perspective. Using empathy maps to help guide your course design decisions can help you prioritize changes in course design or look at syllabus policies from a new perspective.
After creating some empathy maps, we’ll discuss how these maps can inform practical changes to course design, Canvas course sites, and more.
Pre-Work
None
Session Recording
Presentation Slides and Resources
Presentation Slides: Empathy Mapping
Presentation Transcript: Empathy Mapping (Word document)
