Knowing your learners: Why and How

INTRODUCTION

Given the ever-changing organizational landscape and technological advancements, organizations today operate in the VUCA world. To stay ahead in this challenging environment, it is imperative for organizations to be learning-centered and constantly evolve their practices. While this may be true at the organization level, it is also applicable for individuals, as learners.

With the advent of modern and innovative ways of learning and emphasis on inclusion of instructional design and adult-learning principles, the emphasis is often seen being limited to the design and facilitation of learning that reflects operational complexities.

Additionally, the adult educators and content creators, who wish to boost the learning process, attempt to understand the target audience along with the ways of consuming information are gaining prominence in the learning process. The idea is to take a step back from the content designing process and contextualize the product to the needs of the learners.

THE PROBLEM/CHALLENGE

To give context; for instance, when designing a capacity-building intervention for enhancing effectiveness of ASHA workers (the community level care providers) based on the requirements shared by the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the adult educators and content designers/creators must not only comprehend NRHM’s requirements but also acknowledge ASHA workers as learners, who can potentially act as catalyst for higher impact on-ground.

It is crucial to note here that while ASHA workers are the target audience of the capacity-building intervention, they may not necessarily be the end-beneficiaries in the public welfare scheme. Rather, ASHA workers should be seen here as an important part of the overall value chain for creating the requisite impact on ground in the state’s healthcare services. Citizens of the state, as the end-beneficiaries, ultimately stand to gain from improvements in citizen-service delivery facilitated through ASHA workers.

While the capacity-building approach may serve the demand-generator (NRHM) purpose, some aspects of the approach will have a direct impact on the target audience (ASHA workers), as they will act as a facilitator in finally dispensing the impact at the beneficiary level (citizens).

THE SOLUTION

Adult learners have many identities, and their motivations for undertaking a learning course can be as varied as their identities. The unique challenges that an ‘adult learner’ may face include work/life/study balance, time management, relationship management, scheduling conflicts at work and study, cultural differences/ displacement, and academic readiness.

Knowing the learner would support the overall competency development with far-reaching benefits, both on an immediate and long-term basis. On an immediate basis, understanding the learner supports better learner engagement, facilitating an impactful learning outcome for the learners. On a long-term basis, impacts such as better knowledge retention and transfer of learning can be witnessed, thereby leading to higher possibilities of application of acquired learnings at the workplace.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Before initiating the learner profile characterization, the fundamental data about the learner should be collected and analyzed. This can be captured in many ways, namely, knowing the learner group size, learners’ career level, learner group composition structure, their work conditions, and whether the learners are together or dispersed.
Let us now look at some of the segments that may be worth exploring to analyze the contextual landscape and obtain an understanding about learner profiling.

1. Demographic profile captures the socio-economic factors, these include, age, gender, primary language, profession, current role, and formal educational background
2. Role contextualisation entails an analysis of a typical day at work. Some important aspects that may be helpful include the following:

Primary role and responsibilities,
Typical role-based challenges,
Availability of supervisory guidance,
Peer-support,
Constraints at the workplace.
Learning priorities and preferences, such as career goals, available time in hand for learning, identified barriers to learning, and preferences on mode of learning - group or individual

3. Motivations and expectations related factors help in highlighting the core motivation for learners to undertake the course and their expectations from the learning journey. Some of the important factors to look at are:

Reasons for taking the course/ learning intervention
Nature of participation - Voluntary or compulsory/ mandatory
Level of urgency for undertaking the learning intervention
Basic expectations from the learning interventions
Awareness about the indicative learning objectives
Alignment of learning objectives with the achievement of career goals

4. Self-awareness on skills will aid in obtaining understanding on the current knowledge, skills on relevant topics. Most importantly, if the learners are aware of their knowledge gaps, they have a head-start for their own personal/ professional development.
5. Learning preferences can be useful in aligning the suitable media and mode of learning. It is important to know the preferred media type, mode of learning, level of engagement, self-paced learning or instructor-led sessions.
6. Technical readiness and accessibility focuses on the hardware and software availability and readiness with the learners. Any technical gaps are important to be addressed for smooth consumption of the course.

SUMMING UP

One of the critical elements of a well-designed competency-based capacity building approach is to offer relevant and high quality learning intervention. The awareness of the target audience for learning intervention supports the process through focused approach on content design and facilitating smooth consumption of content, thereby ensuring effective learning and its application at a professional setting. Hence, a prudent allocation of time, effort and resources deployed towards developing deep understanding of the learners, can go a long way in reaping higher returns on the investments by creating meaningful learning experiences and outcomes.