Learner Persona

This artifact presents a learner persona developed to guide the design of the Mastering Storytelling Fundamentals module. The persona represents a mid-career literature or social sciences teacher with strong analytical skills but limited experience in creative writing. The persona includes details about professional background, motivations, challenges, and preferred learning styles. The persona was developed through a multi-step process that combined reflective drafting with AI-assisted ideation.

Core Competencies

  • Creating Design Resources and Project Documentation

     This artifact demonstrates the use of learner personas as conceptual and communicative tools to guide design choices. It helped clarify learner goals, prior knowledge, and engagement needs—directly informing the scope of content, tone of materials, and activity formats. The persona also functioned as a reference point for conversations about alignment, accessibility, and relevance across the module. Its development reflects an ability to prototype and refine design ideas using both traditional and AI-assisted methods.

  • Using Knowledge of Technology Affordances and Constraints

    I used ChatGPT to generate multiple versions of a learner persona based on my initial draft. The tool was especially helpful in expanding the range of motivations, learning goals, and challenges I might not have considered on my own. Comparing across versions allowed me to refine the final persona with more nuance and specificity. This experience deepened my understanding of how AI can support early-stage ideation in learner-centered design—while also showing its limitations in capturing contextual subtleties that require lived or domain-specific insight.

  • Applying Learning Theories and Design Frameworks

    The persona was used to align content, tone, and activity types with a specific learner’s motivations, goals, and knowledge gaps—embodying learner-centered design in practice. It also supported the application of motivational and constructivist learning theories, helping me consider how to scaffold creative writing skills for someone with strong analytical abilities but limited prior experience. This ensured that design choices were responsive, intentional, and grounded in pedagogical reasoning.

  • Integrating Inclusive Design Principles and Practices

    The persona development process helped me attend to learner variability and surface assumptions I may have held about prior knowledge or access to creative skill development. By iterating through different learner profiles, was able to consider a wider range of experiences and challenges. This work contributed to a more inclusive and accessible course module, designed to support learners who may not see themselves as "creative writers" but who bring rich disciplinary insight and lived experience to the learning space.

Developing this learner persona helped me see more clearly how important it is to define the audience early in the design process. It allowed me to focus on a specific learner profile—someone with a clear motivation, disciplinary background, and creative learning challenge. Iterating through versions, including those generated with ChatGPT, surfaced my own assumptions and helped me refine them into a more inclusive, nuanced portrait. This process clarified how personas can anchor design choices—from learning outcomes to tone and activity type—and deepened my understanding of how both theory and technology can support learner-centered design.