DrBillWilliamson.com | RPW 520 Winter 2018: Examining Audiences

Workshop + Examining Audiences

This page describes the objectives, activities, submission guidelines, and on-going work required for the Examining Audiences workshop.

Workshop Overview

This workshop asks you to consider what audiences might be interested in the expertise you have to share through the Public Health Project (PHP), and to map patterns of expectations and needs for understanding how best to serve those audiences.

Workshop Objectives

Identify potential members of audiences interested in medical topics relevant to your work on the PHP.
Examine and communicate the motivations and expectations of those potential audiences.
Develop plausible personae that illustrate audience values and expectations.

Workshop Details

This workshop requires you to identify and examine prospective audiences for the Public Health Project (PHP), and explore strategies for understanding each.

During this workshop, you will complete four tasks.

Identify potential audience members for the PHP.
Speculate on questions, concerns, and motivations relavent to those potential audience members.
Detail the working, topical knowledge of each category of audience members.
Generate two personae to represent different categories of audience members.

When you have completed the work of the workshop, post your notes and personae through SVSU Canvas on the Discussion forum for this workshop. Attach the persona files to your written reply.

Identify Potential Audience Members for the PHP

Select one of the topics you might explore for your Public Health Project. List several possible audiences for that project. Then refine the list to 2-3 general categories of users (e.g., new patients, family members of patients, allergy sufferers, smokers), and 2-3 more narrowly defined, specific audiences that represent examples from those categories (i.e., think individuals around whom you can define a persona later).

Speculate On Questions, Concerns, and Motivations Relevant to Those Potential Audience Members

Begin to construct a detailed word sketch of each audience you identify. Generate answers to the following questions.

What questions would you anticipate each audience to ask?
What worries or concerns would drive each audience's inquiry into the topic for the PHP?

Detail the Working, Topical Knowledge of Each Category of Audience Members

Continue to construct your word sketch of audiences by describing each in terms of the following questions.

What knowledge relevant to the topic could you safely assume that the audience has?
What knowledge relevant to the topic could you not safely assume that the audience has?

Generate Two Personae to Represent Different Categories of Audience Members

Draw on the qualities and characteristics you have generated to craft two sample persona to represent individual audience members for your Public Health Project. Specifically, generate word sketches for individual audience members who come to your PHP with different, but equally plausible concerns. Draw up a profile for each persona that includes the following details.

Personal Details.

Name.
Age.
Gender.
Occupation.

Questions. Craft 2-3 specific questions that this person would ask you about the subject matter for the PHP (e.g., Mr. Person would like to know this about that.)
Knowledge.

2-3 pieces of knowledge relevant to the subject matter that this person knows.
2-3 pieces of knowledge relevant to the subject matter that this person does not know.

Evaluation Standards

This section describes the standards by which your work will be evaluated for this workshop. Attend carefully to these details. If you do so, you will earn full credit for the workshop.

Evaluation Summary

There are 50 possible points for this workshop. I will award points according to this standard.

50 points (full credit) for posting your summary report (i.e., compiled notes), and personae by the workshop deadline.
35 points (partial credit) for work submitted that does not fulfill all of the posted workshop requirements, or that is submitted late, but within 48 hours of the posted deadline.
0 points (no credit) for work that is submitted more than 48 hours late.

A Note to Instructors, Colleagues, and Others

If you are here because of random chance, or because this content came up in a search, then poke about, and read if you see something useful or interesting. If you are a teacher in any context, and would like to use any of this content in your courses, feel free to do so. However, if you do so, please do two things:

Give me credit for my work in your class; and
Share with me that you are using this material. If you adapt or alter the content, please share with me how you did so. (I appreciate seeing the ways that others apply the ideas I have developed.)

Dr. Bill Williamson | Professor of Technical Communication | SVSU

RPW 520 Writing in Scientific & Technical Contexts