Co-creating with Generative AI (GenAI) for curriculum design: learning personas
Abstract
Generative AI (GenAI) presents new opportunities for learner-centred teaching. This study explores its potential in co-creating learning personas—fictional yet research-informed representations of students – for energy digitalisation education, a field that attracts learners from diverse backgrounds. We document the process of generating nine learner personas with GenAI and evaluating their quality through expert review and benchmarking against publicly available LinkedIn profiles of professionals in similar roles. Our findings indicate that GenAI effectively differentiates professional roles, captures key job-related challenges, and reflects learner motivations, making it a valuable tool for curriculum design. However, critical limitations persist, with GenAI creating overly idealised professionals, lacking diversity in the supporting AI-generated images, and overlooking some nuanced real-world complexities. These challenges highlight the need for human oversight to ensure authenticity, inclusivity, and ethical depth. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for co-creating personas with GenAI for curriculum design
Introduction
Learner-centred teaching approaches emphasize designing content, materials, and assessments that align with the diverse backgrounds and goals of learners. However, understanding a learner base can be challenging, especially in online education, where courses often scale to hundreds or even thousands of learners. A well-established approach from user experience (UX) design that helps address this challenge is the use of learner personas (Quintana et al., 2017). These fictional yet research-informed representations of typical students provide insight into student demographics, skills, motivations, and potential obstacles. Research suggests that personas encapsulate critical behavioural data in an accessible format, helping instructional
designers and educators create targeted, effective learning experiences (Quintana et al., 2017). Additionally, personas offer a shared means of communication between key stakeholders in the course design process (Goodwin, 2009)
The findings in this paper highlight GenAI’s potential to be a valuable co-creator in learning persona development for learner-centred teaching. It effectively differentiates professional roles, captures key job-related challenges, and reflects motivations, supporting its integration into curriculum design. However, critical challenges remain. GenAI tends to generate overly idealised professionals, lacks diversity in GenAI-generated images, and overlooks nuanced real-world complexities such as ethical dilemmas. To enhance GenAI-driven persona creation, we recommend using more specific prompts, intentional inclusion of diversity ethical considerations, and real-world validation.
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