Week2: Goldilocks and the Target Population

As some of you may know, we are in the process of forming a student chapter of AITP at the University of South Carolina. We're nearing the home stretch now, and in August we will be starting the new semester with a new student organization for TSTM students - something the major has been lacking (since we all know that a TSTM student is one that is just too social to be a CS major!).

In going through the process of filling out applications, writing bylaws, and diplomatically deciding the roles for the 5 of us who are founding the chapter, I've often thought of the first Technology Professionals meeting I attended. I had always wanted to attend, but I had a scheduling conflict that did not allow it. This past semester, the meeting time just happened to be right after the ending time of a course I was taking in a room just down the hall. With the exception of nights I had entirely too much schoolwork to do, there was no reason to miss it! As an added bonus, we were able to earn extra credit for TSTM 444 for attending! This was a no brainer. As I settled in and took in my surroundings I had no idea what I was about to be in for... 2 hours of utter confusion with the requisite (as I've learned from other events with college students) free pizza meal. John Long gave, as far as I could tell, a very good presentation about the Erlang programming language. By the time the meeting was over, I felt like I didn't know anything about anything. It was as if all existing knowledge of anything had vanished due to the force of the effort I had just expended trying to "get" Erlang. I left feeling a bit defeated and lobotomized. In speaking to other students after the fact, I came to realize that I wasn't alone. They weren't as dramatic about it... but we agreed - we understood bits and pieces, but overall it was above our heads.

This wasn't the first time I've been in over my head (re: CHEM from my days as a BIO major)... and it certainly won't be the last. The only thing I have to remember is that when it comes to this type of situation, well, I'm average. For every time I've been in a course/meeting/seminar that is out of my reach, there's a course/meeting/seminar that has been below my level... with a few that are just right thrown in the mix.

As I type this, I am realizing just how relevant to Training Systems (and life!) the story of Goldilocks is...

I know it's a stretch, but just humor me.

...just replace the porridge, chair, and bed with different aspects of training sessions. And Goldilocks? Well, she's the target population or intended audience of the sessions. How do we as training professionals figure out what her needs are? How do we know what will and will not work for her?

Two words: Audience Analysis.

All of the front-end analysis tools are important, but I feel like without Audience Analysis... there's no point!

This is something I should have considered in a previous post when I asked my mother (via blog):

So I wonder - how do people (like my mom) who have been in the training industry for years feel about the technological advances we have made? Is the increase in analysis worth the almost instant availability of subject matter data?

In hindsight, posing this question through blogger was not the best option for my Mothers needs and experience. Ever since she popped up on facebook a couple of months ago (and proceeded give daily status updates and actively use all of the tools facebook has to offer)... well, lets just say I have had to re-evaluate Mom's technical skills and abilities. ;) Since I see her facebook accomplishment as no small technological feat, I assumed that the blog response wouldn't be much of a problem. This further supports the importance of Audience Analysis and the necessity of learning not what YOU think the audience is capable of, but what THEY believe they are capable of. To support this, here is my Mom's reply, which was e-mailed to me after a failed attempt at commenting on blogger:

One of the points I tried to make in my response was that things are just not as intuitive to us “older” learners so having to learn new applications takes a lot of my time...I wrote the comment and then when I tried to post it asked for a profile....I don’t know what that means and tried Google but it said I couldn't use that...tried another and lost my comment, retyped it and lost it again. What’s up with that?

So the overall lesson here is that it is too easy to just assume that you know what is suitable for your audience. You'll get lucky sometimes, but without completing an empirical audience analysis... you might be on the wrong track completely!