Title: Understanding Student Learning
Course: Stage 2: Course Design and Technology > Section: 1. Introducing Stage 2 and Understanding our Students

Students develop their approach to learning at different rates and may experience a variety of contextual factors that influence their success. How do your students approach their learning, and what are the influencing elements in their lives?

Example of a Persona: Maria is studying Finance through evening classes at UEM. She works at the head office of a bank in Maputo. Her goal is to become a manager and to one day head up a division of the bank. She is married and has two young children. Maria is a very capable student with good communication, numerical and technology skills. She learns by relating the theory and techniques from her course to her experiences and responsibilities at work. She then tries to identify what she can take from the course to apply to her work. She struggles when the course includes theory and techniques that are not relevant to her work. There are also times when family responsibilities make it difficult to put enough time into her studies and she falls behind with her work or goes for months at a time with far too little sleep.

As a lecturer I will need to help Maria and students like her to see the relevance of the classes to their work. I also need to provide very clear guidance for the assignments and to ensure that these are structured so that even 30 minutes of work late at night can help the student to make some progress.

In light of this new lens, undertake Activity 2.2: Using Personas to understand student learning