Learner Analysis
Questions that have informed our learner analysis have been drawn from the work of Brown and Green (2015). Additionally, we have conducted an online survey among adults age 60 years and older, spoke with Subject Matter Expert Dr. Donna McCabe, and discussed our learners with our client Dr. Tara Cortes.
Who is our intended audience?
Adults, classified as older adults, age 60 years and older, are the intended audience for our learning intervention. We specifically selected this demographic because we felt that the need may be higher for this group. Based on the research we conducted for our Needs Analysis, it became very clear that older adults are targeted by scams and misinformation more than other age demographics. While we believe that critical media literacy is an important skill set for all ages, for this intervention, we will be targeting the older adult population.
​Where and when are they learning?
We would like to create a learning intervention that would be housed at a public library, adult day center, and/or a senior center. This intervention would likely be utilized during the day time, since older adults tend to be retired or only working part-time. This may not be the case for all older adults, however, so we plan to further explore evening times as well.
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​What common traits do learners have?
Based on our survey, we found that the majority of older adults use either the telephone, social media, and/or emails to keep in touch with loved ones. Since these media platforms are being used the most by older adults, it may be helpful for us to ensure that our design covers these areas.
Additionally, another common trait that we found with our audience is that the majority of our respondents shared the same gender. The majority of the older adults who took our survey identified with the female gender.
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​What are the differences among learners?
Interestingly, our data showcased that our learners have a wide range of educational experiences. The experiences ranged from individuals who have less than a high school diploma to those who have a doctoral degree. This made us realize that our learners will be coming to us with potentially a wide range of experience and skillsets. We will need to be sure to account for this and honor all learners' backgrounds in our learning intervention.
Another difference within our data was the type of learning that works best. We had a pretty even split among those who preferred in-person in-classroom education versus utilizing an online module. This data surprised us because we had made a hypothesis that the majority of our older adult learners would prefer in-person over an online module. While more did prefer in person, there were still a large group of our respondents that preferred an online module. We plan to continue our research into our design phase to better understand what type of learning will work best for our learners.
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What is their motivation to participate?
As stated in our Needs Analysis, we discovered in our survey of older adults that a large majority of respondents felt that there is a current issue of misinformation being spread on social media or the Internet, however, when we asked our participants if they would be interested in learning more about how to avoid misinformation, scams, and conspiracy theories, only 32% of those surveyed said that they were interested in learning more about how to avoid misinformation, scams, and conspiracy theories. This finding is important for us to be aware of as many individuals may believe they have a strong understanding of identifying scams, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, however, they may not actually have a strong understanding. This false confidence may inhibit their motivation to learn critical digital literacy skills and will require us to take this into consideration when creating our design.
From our discussion with our SME, Dr. Donna McCabe, we learned about the importance of using real-world examples and case studies within our learning intervention to help motivate learners. This may be a strategy used in our design to help motivate our learners.
Learner Persona
References
Brown, A.H., & Green, T.D. (2015). The Essentials of Instructional Design : Connecting Fundamental Principles with Process and Practice, Third Edition, Routledge. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3569720