Empathy maps for online instructional design

If we are looking to teach in an online context we can use the empathy mapping tool to help gain a deeper understanding of students’ needs, expectations, and concerns relating to online learning.

This can help us identify things that students may be worried about or find difficult, or show us ways in which we can make simple but impactful adjustments to how we teach online.

This can be done by those that are doing the instructional design as well as by students themselves and this can start an important dialogue between teachers and learners about how best to design, deliver, and develop online learning experiences.

It is easy to assume that young people are very technologically confident, that they have easy and regular access to technologies, and that they are very happy to use these in their everyday lives as well as in their learning but this may not be the case.

Taking the time to develop a full empathy map of their needs and concerns can help inform thoughtful instructional design.

Comparing the answers to these two questions can be surprising, informative, and incredibly useful for instructional design.

How to do online empathy mapping

Empathy mapping is simple enough that it can be done entirely on one’s own with nothing more than a pencil and paper, but it becomes increasingly powerful when done with others, and when opened up to be used in discussions and dialogues

Tools such as Miro and Mural or other simple online whiteboard tools like Jamboard, as well as tools like Padlet can all prove very effective tools for online empathy mapping - many of these tools have empathy mapping templates built in.

As long as answers and ideas can be collected, shared, and viewed and a simple template can be put together then the tool can easily work for empathy mapping.

✏️ Activity: Building an Empathy Map

Choose an online tool that you are comfortable and familiar with, such as those listed above.

Use that tool to build a simple empathy map putting your students in the centre and focusing on what your students do, think, feel, and say about online teaching and learning.

You can also use the Empathy Map Template shown below:

When you are working on your empathy map be sure to try and balance the positive and the negative and to use empathy to imagine the situation from their perspective.

When your empathy map is complete, think about how you would use this empathy mapping activity with either students or colleagues.

How would you run the process? What would you use the results for?

What conversations might it start?