Who Are Your Learners?

Before you begin to design your course, it is important to collect information about your potential learners. Knowing key characteristics of the learners who may sign up for your course will inform your design so that the course is relevant and contextual. For example:

Learner Data

Learner data that you may want to collect include:

• Demographic data (age, gender, ethnicity, language)
• Geographical dispersion (where your students are located)
• Prior knowledge and skills (what level of education your students have, what professional development courses they may have taken, and in what areas)
• Prior experience (previous jobs or activities)
• Access to and familiarity with technology (access to a computer, the Internet, CD-ROMs, etc.; how familiar they are with using technology)

Finding Learner Data

The best way to collect data about your potential learners is through a survey or focus groups. However, more often than not there is no time (nor budget) to prepare and send out a survey or to organise a focus group. In this case, you can rely on:

• Your own knowledge of the audience and the community
• Conversations with peers and managers that will allow you to infer some of the key characteristics of the learners
• Data that may be available about the course you are to design, such as the intent and what specific need it will address
• Online searches

The important thing at this point is that you stop to think about the key characteristics of your learners and draft what we call an audience profile.