Message no. 321
Author: James Carlton
Date: Sunday, April 8, 2007 9:40pm
How important is it to understand your learners or potential learning audience?
Pro – If you hope to be able to “reach” your audience you had best know everything you
can about them. That is why we always have the “greet and meet” sessions at the
beginning of most types of learning courses. Questionaires and standarized blurbs about
learning or physical disabilities provide further information about your audience if they
respond. I think it is most important, but then I am a kinesthetic touchy-feely kind of
guy. I love people and like to know them as best I can. That allows me to be
empathetic when appropriate.
Con – In a situation where the audience is broadly dispersed it may not be possible or
desirable to know too much. Simply state the requirements for participation in the
syllabus or pre-registration course materials and hope that only those that feel they can
fully participate will sign up. If the course is set up this way there is no need to know
anything personal about your audience.
What Challenges do you think are inherent in conducting a learner analysis?
Pro – You always face the reality that students may or may not tell you everything about
themselves. You can do the “meet and greet” post an introduction – meet once face to
face (the NMSU way) design a questionaire that answers some basic questions relevant
to learning styles and the course being offered. But, you still will only learn what the
student wants you to know. There is also the possiblility that you might not know enough
about certain learning characteristics to put everyone in the right “basket”. There is the
challenge of then designing the course to meet the needs of all the learners
Con – Just ask the participants to introduce themselves and tell about their interests -
what they expect from the course what is their background and leave it at that. They will
tell what they want to tell and not tell the rest. Don’t worry about it too much – just make
sure you are addressing obvious needs.
Is a learner analysis always possible?
Pro – Sure. You can go shallow or deep with this idea.
Con – Nope – you may not have time to gather the data and do a sufficient analysis. This
could be because the class is large.
If not, then are there strategies that could be employed that would improve the success
of your learning environment for the greatest number of students?
Yes, you can employ a number of techniques to disiminate the materials so you meet the
needs of auditory and visual learners. For kinesthetic learners you can develop projects
to meet their needs. Like choice time in first grade. Choose from one of the following
activities… Discussion chats can be a problem because some don’t type very fast and
find the chat intimidating… voice chats or choice are a good substitute… Allow students
freedom to interact with each other, the materials and the instructor in a variety of
modalities. However, the more you do in this area the more work it is for the instructor
to keep up and give equitable time and grades to the different students.
Jim
