Framing HCD in learning and teaching

So who are my users?

In the learning and teaching space, your users really depend on who you are.

• Subject coordinator: if you are a subject coordinator, your users are both your students and the members of your teaching team.
• Teaching team member: if you are a member of a teaching team, your users will be your students.
• Learning and teaching support staff: if you are a member of support staff your users are really both teaching staff and students – what you create is made to help teaching staff with their needs and ultimately help students with theirs. Sometimes you also assist as a stand-in for student needs when working with teaching staff, so in those moments your link to students as users is even stronger.

So who aren’t my users?

It’s important to note that while the people you report to (subject coordinators for sessional teaching staff and faculty management for subject coordinators and support staff) may have needs that in some ways create requirements for what you need to do, these people are ‘stakeholders’ rather than users. The goal becomes working within the requirements set by a stakeholders, but using user needs to decide on the path for getting there. 

Why not ‘learner centred design’?

While there are people who talk about ‘learner centred design’ as an embodiment of human centred design in education, we are not using this specific terminology because, as we note above, if you are taking a more holistic view of the learning and teaching space there are people apart from learners who benefit from being perceived as endpoint users.