Know Your Audience. Or do you ?

So I prepared my first course, teaching something besides “How to add a new contact to ACT!”.

It was not much of a stretch, but I decided to start a 15 minute lecture on prepping a PC before an install of ACT!. This lecture was to the other students in my “Instructional Design” course at www.sxu.edu.

I followed my “courseware” on building courseware, and I followed the principles of:

1) Course Objectives

2) Duration

3) Materials & Equipment

4) Delivery Method(s). I chose lecture only because it was new technology to a non-technology audience), and I also did a little bit of demonstration, but not too much. Handouts were also given on how to determine PC memory and OS.

5) Evaluation

The result…

I felt uncomfortable, and I realized in 3 minutes that I was over their heads anyway.

My lesson learned.

Don’t assume

I came across as too technical of a presentation. Although I worked furiously to pair down the ACT! install procedure, I didn’t know my audience well enough.

After being in the software business for 15 years, I probably wind up assuming too much about my audience or client’s knowledge at times. After all, our peers are technicians that in many cases blow my doors off in technical knowledge about PCs and programming also.

So, I hope this helps you reconsider your assumptions about your next audience’s knowledge about PCs and ACT!.
Mondo

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