Gather information from and about your learners. You may already have useful information that you have gathered through feedback from course evaluations, emails, and other communication, but ideally you’ll create a specific method of gathering feedback for this exercise. You might do this through conversations or other forms of communication. Ask you learners what they think, feel, say, do, see, and hear. What do they have difficulty understanding or doing?

To Do:

  1. Create an empathy map
  2. Reflect on the feedback you’ve collected from your learners and begin sketching your empathy map. You can do this on paper, in a Word document, or we’ve developed as a Google document Empathy Map Template with fields for you to answer the guiding questions.
    • In the Google document, look under the File menu for an option to
    • Copy it to your own account
    • (or you can Download it as a file).
  3. Rename the file to represent yourself. Then complete the template.
  4. After your Empathy Map is complete, try to get additional feedback in one of the following ways:
    • Seek out a colleague within your department/disciplinary area to discuss with him/her. See if there are shared concerns, or perhaps strategies they might suggest that you have not considered.
    • Circle back to your learners to make sure what you’ve captured accurately reflects their experience. This could involve a conversation with one or more of the group you interviewed.
  5. Submit a shareable link, upload your file or take a photo of your map as your response to this activity.
  6. After you make your submission, save the web address to your response (found in the green confirmation box) so you can use it later for your badge submission form.

This activity is part of the Empathize section of the Technologist Module.

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Resources for this Activity

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218 Responses for this Activity

  • Response to the
    by Aaron Goldt (@agoldt)

    My empathy map is based on a past experience and how I tried to turn feedback into a better experience for which I am still collecting data. In my first semester as faculty I was tasked with creating a brand new lecture for students. It was my first big attempt at such a new large more… »

  • Empathy Map
    by Adam Zalewski (@azalewski)

    I have attached my empathy map based on one of my asynchronous courses review. My feedback after discussion with colleagues is to create ways in order to address the pain portions of the map for my learners . E.g. find synchronous time and anonymous ways to ask questions. The one concern still to address is more… »

  • Empathy map
    by Dora Tsang (@tsando)

    This is an example of an empathy map of what students think about the microbiology course in our program.

  • Activity #1 – Empathy Map
    by Tam Visser (@t_visser2)

    Here is the empathy map for my course: After creating the empathy map and double checking with my students, they would like to add they also enjoy seeing diverse individuals used in the course examples, they prefer if the textbooks go in order of chapters, and they do not enjoy online discussion boards as much more… »

  • Empathy Map –> Treatment Planning (Yayy!)
    by Rahul Mohla (@rmohla)

    Please find attached an empathy map related to feedback I received from my learners for the treatment planning course. As can be gleaned, overall a very positive outlook on what otherwise can be an onerous course. Students did very well and made great leaps and bounds from the start to the end of the semester more… »

  • Empathy Map
    by Rebecca MacAlpine (@rebecca.macalpine)

    Here is an example of an empathy map from my course last year.

  • Empathy Map Activity
    by winton cape (@winton)

    Link to my empathy map https://www.canva.com/design/DAF-gKn7Tuc/Bs2lR1onW6gUDfrCAvsrgA/edit?utm_content=DAF-gKn7Tuc&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton  

  • SME Empathy Map
    by anh lam (@anhlam)

    This empathy map is from the perspective of a project manager working with subject matter experts

  • Empathy Map – Anatomy students
    by Sam Gennidakis (@SGennidakis)

    This is an empathy map as derived from a start stop continue and course evaluation feedback from my Anatomy and Physiology class students in relation to changes regarding lecture and course delivery.  There are successes but generally students are overwhelmed by the amount of content and the online delivery which is limited by the school’s more… »

  • Empathy Map
    by Rena Gandham (@rgandham)

    Empathy Map Activity

    3 Resources for this Activity

    Creative Commons License
    This work by Ontario Extend is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

    2 Responses to “Empathy Map”

    1. Natalia Trubochkina

      am teaching in the LINC Program (Language Instruction to Newcomers to Canada). My students are newcomers to Canada learning English. In my Empathy Map, I tried to look at how my students feel about taking English classes through Zoom. This has been a huge change for all of us, but even more for these students because of the language barrier, no computers, and lack of digital literacy for many of them.
      https://stuconestogacon-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ntrubochkina_conestogac_on_ca/EUbn4fKMtMZFkAagJcqXjcoBWfRUpu4FV35YECygzPYwNQ?e=XAJAT7

      Reply

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