There Is No Such Thing as a Target Audience

When delivering an oral presentation, it is important to know your audience. Unless it is an audience of one, there is no such thing as a target audience. Depending on the subject matter gender, age, life experience which is affected by family of origin patterns, financial or social status (in terms of access to opportunity), occupation, education and training, perspective including a shared or similar historical context, whether English is the primary language, culture, ethnicity, geographical location or origins, religion or world view filters perception.

Polling an audience about interests, and learning motivation and style, provides an instructor the opportunity to tailor information to for greater impact. Break out groups improve learning for most students and gives the instructor the flexibility to hone in by observing the group process. By gleaning information through observation, an instructor can make corrections, scale down objectives to ensure students grasp key concepts or initiate a large group discussion to help students flesh out details by learning from each other.