Know Your Audience | Facilitation Basics (ASTD Training Basics)

In an ideal situation, you have all the information you need about your audience before you begin facilitating your course so that you can begin tailoring your facilitation to the needs of the specific learners. The course designer’s or leader’s guide should provide you with the following information about the learners:

skill and background levels relevant to the content you will be facilitating, and the mix you will have of experienced and not-so-experienced learners
job context information, including whether the participants work alone or in groups; levels of activity and movement that they are accustomed to; and where they are in their work cycle when they come to you (for example, if they will just be ending the graveyard shift and coming to your class exhausted)
learning styles and preferences and types of learning activities that they are accustomed to (and not accustomed to!)
flexibility, openness to change, willingness to try new learning modes and ways of doing things
expectations the learners have for the course and attitudes they have toward the subject and the learning event
circumstances under which they are present at the learning event (for example, if it’s a mandatory course, or if they need to improve job performance or prepare for impending changes).

If you don’t have this information and you have time prior to the learning event to collect it, you can interview, survey, or conduct a focus group with a sample of the learners. Alternatively you may speak with the learners’ supervisors or with other facilitators who have worked with these learners. There may be evaluation data from other courses these learners have participated in that you can consult, or

Basic Rule 11

Know as much as you can about your learner audience.

organizational data might be available regarding the learners (performance reports, quality reports, employee attitude surveys, and so forth).

Think About This

What kinds of opening activities can help you gather learner information? Try spending a few moments asking targeted questions of the early-arriving learners or handing out a short, written survey to learners as they enter the room. You could also conduct a small group activity in which learners share their expectations for the learning event, questions, concerns about the subject matter, or anecdotes that illustrate their experience and background with the subject matter.

If you don’t have this information prior to the course opening, and you don’t have time prior to the learning event to collect the information, you have two options. You can prepare a couple of contingency activities based on what you deduce to be some of the most likely information. Alternatively, you can develop an opening activity that will allow you to gather some of the information.