Animated Inclusive Personae in action (Part 4)
By Katie Stripe, Imperial College London.
This post is the fourth of a series based on the Animated Inclusive Personae (AIP) project which, at its heart, is about creating digital personae that genuinely represent the diversity of our students. The first post was about generating inclusive images, the second about the language that is used in the EDI space, and the third about how these characters can be used to represent disability, visible or otherwise. This post will be about how three new characters have been developed and deployed in a tool to help new students adapt to the high maths content of their STEM courses.
As part of a partnership project between the AIP team, the maths department and three students representing Mathematics, Civil Engineering, and Life Sciences we have developed a catalogue that matches the maths curriculum of all year one programmes with a wide range of internet resources to help students fill in gaps, bridge language barriers, or find resources that might be better suited to their preferences or circumstances. The purpose of the project was ultimately to address the issue of prerequisite knowledge as we know that with such a diverse student body it is impossible to know what each individual student has been taught as part of their school maths curriculum. More information on the catalogue and its development can be found on the Animated Inclusive Personae webpages.
This catalogue used personae throughout the design and development phases to help present the information in a way that would meet the needs of the students and the final output has the characters which were created embedded in it, as well as then being part of the promotion and marketing of the tool.
The process of developing personae for this catalogue very much mirrored the development of the AIP project as a whole, whereby personae started as a user experience tool for the development of Attributes and Aspirations and became integral to the programme and embedded throughout.
Three-character outlines were developed to represent the major student ‘types’ that we believed the catalogue should target. Those were the international student who did not study A-levels and/or studied in another language, the neurodivergent student who may benefit from resources in multiple formats, and the student who does not have an A-level in Further Maths (Further Maths in only a requirement for our maths programmes; however, many programmes assume a higher level of knowledge than is typical in A-Level mathematics)
With these student archetypes in mind the student partners developed a catalogue to present information that would be valuable to them. The use of the personae however did not stop there, using the resources of the AIP project the students developed these archetypes into full characters matching the other animated personae and they are now able to carry out a crucial role within the catalogue. Which is to explain to student users why they are using it, how they are using it, and what the benefits are for them in such a way as to normalize difficulties that they may have and, in effect, give our students permission to use this resource to help them in whatever way they need it to.
These three personae were developed specifically for this project and were designed to meet the needs of the students who would be most likely to use it. However, they also present an excellent case study on how they can be developed to represent the depth of interest and intersectionality of students. As part of his biography Ahmir shares his work with a charity run through the student union and his persona is now being used to promote that charity and the work that they do. Elena has been used by the Careers Service to present information on part-time work and her biography was developed so she has two exemplar CVs to help students maximize their academic and work-based skills for job applications. The reverse is also possible, personae developed for other uses can be expanded and used for new projects. Rachel, originally developed for the Attributes and Aspirations programme, also features in the catalogue as a student partner. Her persona was further developed to help students applying for StudentShapers (the partnership programme that developed this catalogue) by providing an example application with feedback. Her narrative then sees her successful in applying for the team that developed this catalogue and she is now used to show a different aspect of the student experience within this project.
These characters are continually developing and becoming involved in activities as part of their studies and beyond. Hopefully, they will also continue to do so and to help show our students as individuals with motivations, frustrations, and interests including and as well as their studies.