In addition to this inadvertent tendency to create stereotypes, I think that in only making a couple of personas to represent the learning audience you may fall into stereotyping just by lack of a sufficient sampling. How do you determine how many personas would be a representative enough sample? If you are looking at a diverse group of learners, you need more personas, and you need to have instructional materials that cover diverse needs. In larger groups would you break the group into sections to better address individual needs? Or have additional instructors?

I think this detachment phase is a vital part of the process because this is how you translate one person's experience to be impactful for others with similar experiences. Likewise, taking this step back also allows you to process through what the learner thinks they need and what could help the learner grow, and while sometimes these may line up, other times they may differ.

As our learners and targeted audience are adapting to new situations and challenges, how often do we need to be re-evaluating personas and our instructional strategies? We want to be addressing current concerns and needs, which could be achieved to some extent by soliciting real-time feedback, but the core of the instructional strategies seems like it would be harder to adapt as often.

The way "the customer is always right" is referenced here focuses on providing high quality service (or product). I think, in the educational context, this has to be taken with a grain of salt because you want to thoroughly determine what the learner needs and wants to serve them best, but there are also times where education needs to push the learners to grow and develop further. Knowing how to strike the right balance of when to ebb and when to flow to get the best results for students is a skill that needs to be developed by learning experience designers and educators alike.

I think this empathy map is a good way to try to organize a fairly complex concept. I would venture the majority of us try to embody an empathetic standpoint, but this can at times be easier said than done. The mapping process offers a starting point for your discussion and your observation, but it also allows you to more objectively categorize the data you collect.

This comment really stuck out to me to the point I reread the surrounding portions again. I guess my question with consciously always expecting to have a conflict is does that end up amplifying something that may have otherwise been a minimal conflict or basically gone unnoticed? This kind of sounds to me like always waiting for the other shoe to drop. While knowing conflict may arise allows you to prepare or try to better navigate conflict, at what expense?