Persona Life Skills

Online personality insights approach to Social-Emotional Learning

Persona Life Skills is an online Social-Emotional Learning platform with a unique personality insights framework at its heart, helping schools boost wellbeing and employability for students age 13 to 19. The scaffolded curriculum works equally well in the classroom or in blended learning, guiding young people to develop 22 Life Skills across six Skillsets, for social, learning and work situations.

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Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2019

Established

125K

Children

21

Countries

Target group

Students upper

Updated

June 2023

We are on a mission to boost the wellbeing, employability and success of young people globally. We believe in a world with more cooperation and less conflict. We aim to provide ready-made resources that empower any non-specialist teacher to deliver impactful student personal development and social-emotional learning, in the classroom, or in blended or remote learning.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Even before COVID-19, wellbeing among UK teenagers fell by over 20% from age 10 to 16. This pattern is repeated worldwide, especially in Asia and the Middle East. This results in less agency, poorer academic attainment and lower employability. We developed the Persona Life Skills online learning platform to help schools reverse this disturbing trend, using a unique personality insights approach.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

There is a proven causal link between developing social-emotional skills such as communication skills, problem solving and resilience, and improved wellbeing. And social-emotional learning is accelerated and deepened when approached from a personality insights perspective.

Persona Life Skills takes this idea one step further by guiding students to apply their personality insights to their interactions with others. Students learn life skills that help to boost wellbeing in three contexts: 1. Social; 2. Learning; 3. Work.

Our scaffolded curriculum complements existing Personal Development, PSHE, RSE, SEL and Life Skills curricula. The platform has over 20 teacher-facilitated modules, and over 60 self-directed learning modules, for the classroom or blended learning.

91% of our students report they learnt how to improve the targeted life skills in the modules they took.

Teachers rate the platform 4.3 out of 5 on EdTech Impact (https://edtechimpact.com/products/persona-life-skills)

How has it been spreading?

We completed two grant projects with the UK R&D agency Innovate UK in 2020/21, to develop our personality insights algorithm, specially designed for young people, and the UX.

The MVP was tested in the UK, Spain and Malaysia, and we launched a freemium version in Jul-21.

454 schools/colleges in 41 countries have registered to use the platform with 125,000 students, as of Jun-23.

Persona Life Skills was a top 10 finalist in the 2022 Super Connect for Good competition, and a 2022 GESS Awards 'Wellbeing' finalist. We have also been shortlisted for the WISE Edtech Accelerator.

We are a member of the Google Cloud for Startups program.

Press coverage in BESA, Education Technology, FE News, The Times, Teach Middle East, Wellbeing in International Schools, Education Business and The Educator.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Register for a free teacher/school account at https://persona.education/register. After registering, you can access the platform to look around and use the free version with your students and colleagues for as long as you like. You will also receive a link to a pre-populated demo site to see how it works in practice.

Media

Teacher Onboarding module

Intuitive student learning journey

Personality insights for teenagers

Implementation steps

School/Teacher: Register a Free account at https://www.persona.education/register. Complete the form using your school/college work email. You will receive a confirmation email with your password immediately.

Take the Teacher Onboarding training module

This 30-50 min learning module gives you the confidence to teach Persona Life Skills, through understanding the pedagogy, the curriculum, and the student outcomes. You will also discover your own unique mix of personality styles. The structure of the Teacher Onboarding module is the same as the student modules, giving you a taste of the student learning experience.

Create Group(s) and student accounts

Set up at least one Group, eg. a class or tutor group. Note the Group code and invite students to create their accounts at https://persona.education/student-register using the code. Students will be signed in automatically the first time. Optionally, invite more teachers to the platform by creating accounts for them, and attaching them to one or more Groups. They will receive their password by email.

Unlock and deliver learning modules

Unlock the modules you want your students to access. Deliver 45-60 min teacher-facilitated 'life challenge' modules in class (or via blended/online learning). Ask students to take 15-20 min self-directed 'life skills' modules for homework or in allocated time. Or direct your students to follow the suggested learning journey on their homepage.

Check student progress and impact

Use the Groups screen to see modules started/completed by each student, and review their answers/activities. Use the Dashboard screen to see self-reported learning impact for each student, groups, cohorts or the whole school.

Upgrade to a Paid Subscription for full access

The free version has limited access. A Paid Subscription provides full access to all modules and features, including all 20+ teacher-facilitated modules and all 66 self-directed learning modules, Persona Insights, Invitations, Persona Community and Persona Adaptability. Plus, all future added content/features.