For whom are you designing this course?
Effective course design starts with understanding who your students are—not just in terms of demographics, but as learners shaped by different experiences, identities, and ways of engaging with learning.
At UBC, this means recognizing that students bring diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and needs into the classroom, and that these differences shape how they access, experience, and succeed in your course.
Taking time to consider your students helps you design more intentionally—anticipating potential barriers, making learning more relevant, and building in supports that allow a wider range of students to participate and succeed. This might include how you structure activities, design assessments, or create opportunities for connection and belonging.
Rather than designing for a single “typical” student, you’re designing for a diverse group of learners—and creating conditions where all students feel valued, supported, and able to engage meaningfully in the learning process.
Create a quick student profile that will inform your design
About Your Students
- Academic level: What year are they in? What’s their major or program?
- Prior knowledge: What do they already know? What gaps might they have?
- Motivation: Why are they taking your course? (requirement, interest, career?)
- Concerns: What worries them about this course or subject?
- Goals: What do they hope to achieve or learn?
- Constraints: What might make learning difficult? (time, other courses, work, family?)
Consider the design implications these bring about
- What assumptions can you safely make about prior knowledge?
- How can you make the course relevant to their motivations?
- What barriers need to be addressed in your design?
- How can you build on their existing knowledge and interests?
Remember
Your students are diverse—this profile represents common patterns, not every individual. Stay flexible and responsive as you learn more about your actual students throughout the term.
Going deeper: Student Empathy Mapping in your specific context
In their book, Understanding by Design, authors Wiggins and McTighe describe empathy as “the deliberate act of trying to find what is plausible, sensible, or meaningful in the ideas and actions of others…” (pp. 98-99).
Empathy requires us to be attentive to the experiences of others and (in a sense) walk alongside them as we work to understand what may (at times) seem puzzling to us—because of the distance between our experiences and those of our students.
Sample empathy map of a student persona
Let’s spend some time to develop and deepen our own insights about our learners, their experiences, challenges, and perspectives.
Step 1: Download this blank Empathy Map Download blank Empathy Map
Step 2: Think of a student you had interacted with in the past
Give your student persona (or composite) a name, situation (their history/story), and intentions (motivations for study). Write a few sentences in the middle of your map describing your student persona so that you can really visualize your student as you are completing the map.
Step 3: Fill in the empathy map in as much detail as possible; consider some of these prompting questions:
- Actions: What do you imagine that your students do (in class and out)? This can include their lives outside of class.
- Thoughts/Feelings: Building from the actions, what thoughts and feelings do you imagine they have or experience on a regular basis? This can include thoughts about themselves, their classes, their decisions, etc.
- Influences: What do you perceive to be the influences on their thoughts, feelings, and actions? This might be their beliefs and values about themselves, the world, and their purpose. It may also include the influence of people who are important in their lives.
- Goals: From what you’ve surfaced so far, what do you imagine the students’ goals might be for their studies, their lives, and their future?
- Pain Points: What disappointments may have influenced your student’s thinking or behaviour?
Step 4: Review your entire map and consider where you may need to take a deeper dive in your imagination to surface important details
What are the problems/needs that your learner needs to address? Use the empathy mapping framework to develop a deeper understanding of your students’ perspectives, challenges, and needs.
What insights emerge as you review your empathy map?
If possible, validate your empathy map by talking to actual students—either from previous offerings of the course or similar courses. Their perspectives might surprise you and refine your understanding
Stay in Tune with Your Students: Build in practical, in-course activities to stay informed.
Here are three activities you could build into your course to help you get started:
1. Getting to Know You Survey (Week 1)
A short, low-stakes survey that invites students to share how they learn best.
You might ask:
- What helps you learn most effectively in a course?
- What challenges have you experienced in similar courses?
- What are you hoping to get out of this course?
- Is there anything you’d like me to know to support your learning?
Why it works:
Gives you early insight into students’ expectations, prior experiences, and potential barriers—and signals that their learning matters.
2. Quick midpoint check-in (A quick, informal check-in around the midpoint of the course)
You might ask:
- What’s helping your learning in this course?
- What could be adjusted to better support you?
- What should we keep doing?
Why it works:
Gives students a voice and allows you to make small, meaningful adjustments before the course ends.
3. Muddiest Point Check-in (can be used for every class or periodically through the term)
Build in quick, regular opportunities for students to share what’s unclear.
How it works:
At the end of a class (or module), ask:
“What is still unclear or confusing for you?”
Why it works:
Provides ongoing, real-time insight into student understanding and helps you adjust your teaching as you go.
Key Takeaways
UBC students come from diverse backgrounds. Putting their needs first when designing a course will help us create a more welcoming and inclusive learning environment.
Our course design considerations will change slightly each time we teach the course based on the students that we are teaching. It is a good idea to reflect on who your students are and what they may be experiencing during each iteration of your course.
