Knowing Your Audience

In the next few weeks, I will be transitioning to a new job where I will be designing, developing, and implementing learning solutions. This is pretty similar to my current position, but my audience is changing drastically. At my current job, my audience consists of everyday working people. They often don’t have much experience with technology, and most of the training revolves around system tasks (ex. entering a delivery order in PeopleSoft). At my new job, my audience will be highly-technical, highly-educated professionals (ex. engineers with PhDs). I’m trying to be proactive and anticipate some of the differences I’ll see with this new audience. I think I’ve broken it down into the following chunks…

• Writing Style
  Content should be written for the right audience (ex. using technical jargon vs. writing content at a 6th grade level).
• Motivation
  Does the learner just want to know how to complete a task to do their job? Or are they dedicated to learning, knowing that it is beneficial for their career?
• Devices
  When working with a more technically-savvy audience you may be able to use newer technologies and utilize a wider variety of devices (ex. iPods, smartphones).

Am I missing anything? What other considerations are there for an audience’s learning preferences?

Author: B.J. Schone

B.J. is the Founding Editor of eLearning Weekly and has contributed more than 150 articles. He works in elearning at Qualcomm, focusing on mobile learning.