Something I preach, but don’t practice well #302: audience analysis

I know better. I may not have an ID degree, but this is not a practice used only in the learning field. It’s something we spent more than enough time on in grad school. It’s the first principle of any type of design: “Know your audience.” I know it, and I understand its importance. Yet (and I’m ashamed to admit it), as an ID, probably less than five percent of what I do on any given project is spent conducting audience analysis. And, almost all of the information I do have about my learners is secondhand (at minimum). I don’t interact with the learner population very much. In fact, I usually only hear from students during ILT pilot courses. For e-Learning courses, I don’t see or hear from them at all, unless I happen to overhear talk in the break room or cafeteria, when they’re talking openly because they don’t know who I am or what I do.

So many of the courses I design are catch-alls—attempts to meet the needs of a large, diverse audience. I can’t possibly design for each job role, so I have a vague, fleeting idea of who my audience is and how day-to-day work is accomplished. Sadly, I’m pretty out of touch. I work with SMEs who, like almost all SMEs, can’t remember what it was like to be new and green.

I tend to get caught up in content—I love to understand how things work, I like details, and I like to organize information. If I give less than five percent to audience, I probably give at least fifty to content. Content is important, but I need to put my own likes asides and spend more time with my audience. I have to put into practice what I know (and what I spent so much time and effort on in grad school). I have access to real, live potential students. I just need to get up and go see them, talk to them, watch them. Convincing them to give me time may be a challenge—our human resources are so limited, it’s hard to get anyone’s time right now. So, I have to put other skills I learned to practice—persuasion.

I suppose I’m just another casualty to aDDIE (the analysis piece is easily skimmed over to the more creative, interesting endeavors). I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s guilty of inadequate (or even nonexistent) audience analysis. I accept that for my first five years in ID, I’ve been woefully, shamefully deficient in that arena. So, now to put intentions to practice—let the rubber hit the road. I’ll be sure to report on the journey.

Keynotes and how rhetoric ruined my life

In grad school, this was the common saying: "Rhetoric will ruin your life." Well, it does. I never attended a conference pre-rhetoric classes, so I don't know of anything else. Keynote speakers always interest me. At LS2010, we had three different keynotes, and honestly, before the conference, I hadn't heard much about of any of them. I just knew they each had written/published a book, a fact, in and of itself, doesn't provide any substantial credibility to me. They're not in the learning industry, at least not directly. Sir Ken Robinson, the first keynote speaker, kicked off the conference, and his was the only session that didn't set off any major alarms in my internal "Oh, really?" system. I had just come from a Breakfast Byte session where I listened (sadly, much too fuzzy sleepy to participate) to a discussion of schemas and how we use them to deterime how we accept new information: it fits in with our current schema and we accept it; it challenges our schema and we adapt or change our schema to account for this new info; or, it goes so far against our schema that we reject it outright. Maybe Ken's speech seemed to fit my schema, so I wasn't as analytical. I'd be interested to read a critique of the session.

I never have much confidence that I'll get much from a keynote session. It seems like the speakers talk in absolutes--lots of Big T statements. I guess we don't want to listen to a bunch of qualifiers (in which case, I would stink as a keynote speaker), so speakers tend to take a strong stand and speak with authority as though we should agree with everything. It's scary when I see ideas or models taken as wholesale truth and blindly absorbed and followed--whether it be keynote speaking or ADDIE. Who is conveying this information? Are their statements supported or just opinions? What emotions are they trying to invoke to move you toward action? Do you really agree, or are they just a charasmatic smooth talker? It's easy to get wrapped up in charisma--I do it too. At some point, during or after, just think please.