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"A learner analysis identifies the critically important general traits of a group as well as identifying the range of skills and talents within that group that are relevant to the instructional situation." (Brown & Green, 2015).
In order to design effective instruction, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the NYU students' characteristics, prior knowledge, personal experience, and feelings regarding the Albert registration process, as well as their resource-seeking behavior and the type of instruction that would be most effective.
Our team decided to apply the approaches that Smaldino, Lowther, and Russell (2012) have suggested, "the learner analysis should focus on three aspects of the target audience: general characteristics, specific entry competencies, and learning styles."
General Characteristics
General Characteristics
Target Audience
Target Audience
According to Brown & Green (2015), it is necessary to understand the target audience of learners and determine in advance what they can and will do. During the research, we identified our target audience as both undergraduate and graduate students who are studying at NYU, especially first-year students. Our goal is to create a helpful and simple tutorial to help students with their registration who are not familiar with the course registration process or have never used Albert before.
NYU Student Demographics
NYU Student Demographics
From Communications, Office of Global Services, NYU (2022), we learn that NYU has a total enrollment of approximately 60,786 students across various campuses and programs.
Gender: 49% male, 51% female.
International students: 22% of the undergraduate students and 41% of the graduate students.
Race/Ethnicity: 30% White, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 9% Black/African American, 32% Asian, and 4% other races.
Survey Data Analysis
background information
According to the survey results, 29 people responded, and all of our respondents were graduate students (See figure 1). There are 75.9% of students in their second semester, 10.3% in their fourth semester, 6.9% in the first semester, and 6.9% in the third semester (See figure 2). Almost 75% of students describe themselves as technologically proficient (See figure 3).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Specific Entry Competencies
Specific Entry Competencies
Survey Data Analysis
registration experience
The survey question asked, "How easy did you find your first registration experience?" where 1 represents "not easy at all", and 5 represents "very easy." Based on the results below, none of our respondents thought the registration process was very easy. The results of our survey indicate that 37.9% of students found it rather difficult to register, and another 37.9% are neutral (See figure 4). The reason why none of our participants find the registration experience super hard might be that the majority of our respondents are not first-year students and are already familiar with the registration process.
Figure 4
In our survey, we asked respondents to select all the boxes that may apply to them on the resources they used when registering. Based on the data collected from the survey, 62.1% of students will go to academic advisors when they are registering, 44.8% will look for department-specific resources (See figure 5), and 37.9% will ask their peers for help. Based on this result, we found out that plenty of students have experienced problems or difficulties during their registration process. Since this is a multiple-choice answer, we may predict they have been trying different resources to ask for help.
Figure 5
Learning Styles
Learning Styles
Survey Data Analysis
open question
At the end of our survey, we ask an open-ended question: "What is something a tutorial on the Albert registration process must include? You can base this on something you really struggled with for example." And we use affinity mapping to organize students' suggestions (See figure 6). Here are some of our findings:
Students feel course searching is the most confusing and hope a tutorial would include it.
Students would like to know other resources to find their electives courses.
Figure 6
Interviews
We conducted two interviews with the two first-year NYU students. After the interview, we did affinity mapping to organize our findings.
Based on our findings from the interviews and survey data, here are some struggles that students face:
- Students don't know how to navigate Albert (how to search, drop, swap courses, etc.).
- The course searching function is confusing.
- Students don't know where to find resources to help with registration.
Personas
References
Brown & Green (2015) The Essentials of Instructional Design: Examining the Situation, Chapter 5 (pg 72-86)
Communications, Office of Global Services, NYU (2022). International Student Data. NYU.
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