Audience

I was reminded recently that the initial questions for trainers approaching development or delivery of training usually concern the audience:

1. What do they already know? The answer provides the context, content baseline, and vocabulary.
2. What do they need to know? What do they need to be able to do? The answer needs to provide specific objectives that will inform the outline of training content.
3. How do they learn? The answer could influence anything from content-driven parameters to learning-styles driven parameters, for example. Not to be neglected, however, are the affective factors that will drive the style and substance of the training.

Understanding the trainees (whatever their organizational role or standing) as individuals is also a prerequisite to the customized interactions particularly prized by adult trainees. -MW-