Arizona State University- Application Essay
Describe a quality that you believe is critical to working in the field
of educational technology and at least one situation where you
have demonstrated this quality.
Empathy is the ingredient that should always be included, but so often is forgotten in our everyday interactions. And that is no different in the world of creating trainings. Empathy has no script and for some feels like an abstract concept, but really it is simple. As Brené Brown tells us, “It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating…”
Too often when creating learning curriculum and trainings, we think only of the content we want to relay and how to present it. But I posit that we need to think more about the learner’s journey. What will be their experience from beginning to end? Are we making this as intuitive and user-friendly as we can? Have we anticipated their questions? All these questions contribute to feeling empathy for the learners and the journey they will take within our course. We can account for these and other experience-based questions by using journey mapping, a tool created to help us step into the customer’s perspective.
We must infuse our courses with empathy, but I learned this hard way. In the most recent suite of trainings that I presented to the Professional Development Specialists, the community of practice within my company, I started by focusing primarily on designing the content. And while the content is effective, the course as a whole was not. After launching the training and receiving feedback, I realized that I did not have a clear vision for the learner’s perspective. Even though I had developed an ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) model it did not account for the learner's perspective, which led to friction and confusion. I realized that while tried and true, ADDIE simply wasn’t enough. Upon doing some research, I discovered the customer experience journey map and gained a better appreciation for the role that empathy plays in learning. I got to work, created my learner’s journey map, and updated my courses.
Now with empathetic considerations, I am finding that learners are staying more engaged with the process and even passing the exams at a higher rate!
