Audience Analysis

Why do you need to analyze your audience?

An important early step in designing a lesson is to do an audience analysis. Who are your learners? What can you reasonably assume about them? And what does this mean for how you should design your lesson to maximize their chances of achieving the objectives?

There are two main types of situations in which you will need to perform audience analysis in designing a lesson:

Sometimes you are handed a set of learners, and you need to perform an audience analysis on that group so that you can tailor your lesson to their needs.
- For example, if you are asked to teach a workshop for 6th-12th grade girls from a local school district who have chosen to join the science club, that is your audience – now you can begin analysis on what that means for your workshop design.
Sometimes you are designing an optional lesson, and you need to perform an audience analysis on your ideal set of learners. This will allow you to define and communicate what sorts of learners your lesson is geared towards, in hopes of recruiting those sorts of learners to your lesson.
- For example, if you are designing an online learning module to share your expertise on gene editing, what sort of learners are you hoping to attract? Do you want to gear your lesson to the general public, or do you want to assume a high level of molecular biology knowledge? Your module should be very different depending on your choice.

How should you analyze your audience?

Ideally, you would be certain of all of the relevant facts about your audience before designing your lesson. However, that is almost never the case. You will have to rely on some level of assumption based on what you do know.

It is important, however, when making these assumptions, not to delve into the realm of stereotype. As the Pitt Department of Communication states, "Although thorough audience analysis demands taking demographic factors into account, such analysis does not legitimate stereotyping. Stereotypes are fixed beliefs or opinions about people in a particular group. Stereotyping neglects individual differences and often causes people to make decisions based on flawed reasoning."

Some characteristics that can be helpful to include in your audience analysis assumptions are:

level of background/prerequisite knowledge about your topic – what do they already know that you can build upon?
amount of time and flexibility of schedule they have – how time intensive can you make this lesson for them, and can you assume they will all be able to gather at the same time?
physical location – can you assume they will all be able to gather at the same place? are they all in the same time zone?
level of interest – are your learners taking this lesson because they value what they expect to learn (ie they're intrinsically interested or they need the knowledge)? Or are they being required to take this lesson and just need to "get through it" so they can do something they want to do?
specific topics of interest – are your learners more likely to be interested in (or need knowledge about) one aspect of your topic as opposed to another?
technology availability and familiarity – what technology do your learners have available to them? For example, can you assume they have a laptop, reliable internet access at home, and Microsoft Office? Are they comfortable navigating online and learning new software?

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