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Before you go any further in the design of your module,
you will need to identify your target audience or the
students for whom you are designing the module. According
to James Russell (Russell,
1974), there are two types of information you will need
to specify about your students:
- their general learner
characteristics and
- their entry behaviour
or what you will expect them to be able to do before
they begin the module.
1. General
Learner Characteristics
The general learner characteristics of your target
audience could be relevant to the content or skills
you hope to teach and, as a result, also impact on the
teaching materials and activities you choose.
Russell lists a number of factors you may want to consider
in relation to your target audience:
| demographic information: |
visual or audio ability |
dexterity for motor tasks |
| sex |
verbal ability |
intelligence |
| ethnic origin |
personality characteristics |
reading ability |
| age/grade level |
physical or intellectual abilities |
technical ability |
| socio-economic background |
level of motivation |
mathematical ability |
| special interests |
emotional maturity |
attention span |
Helpful Tips
Many faculty, however, don’t know where to begin
when it comes time to sit down and actually write up
the description of their target audience. The following
list of questions taken from Eugene Rubin’s Web
site (Rubin,
n.d.), has proven to be quite useful since answering
these questions gets the reflection and discussion going.
The answers can then be used to write the description
of the target audience.
Questions to Help Identify the Target Audience
- Who are the students taking the course?
- What is the total number of learners per group
that will be online at any one time?
- Where are they located?
Questions to Help Identify the Learner Characteristics
- What previous knowledge or experience do they have?
- What specific entry skills do they have?
- What special interests do they have?
- What general motivation do they have?
- What special problems or concerns do they have?
- What will be the consequences of success and failure?
- What language(s) do they speak or want the instruction
in?
- What time do the participants have available?
- What is their attitude toward information and communication
technologies?
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