Page 108 - Making Instruction Work
P. 108
chap 9 3/4/97 3:35 PM Page 94
94 making instruction work
for increasing student interest in your subject.
“Wait a minute,” you may be saying. “Does anybody actual-
ly do this target population thing?” You bet they do. Look in
the folder of any accomplished instructional developer and
you’ll find several pages of prose describing the audience for
the intended instruction. And the more diverse that audience,
the more detailed the description. There’s gold in them thar
words (translation: detailed knowledge of the target popula-
tion is one of the fastest roads to improved instructional effi-
ciency and student motivation).
Like the other procedures described in this book, the target
population description is yet another procedure that you can
apply without requiring special permission or changes to pol-
icy.
How to Do It
1. Begin by reminding yourself that your TPop. description
will be a working document that will not be published or
seen by others. Remind yourself that it is not necessary
to organize the content into categories unless that activ-
ity helps you to think.
2. Think about the students who will be entering your
course, and write down everything you think you know
about them. Write the items in whatever order comes to
mind. Let one thing remind you of another. If you need
help getting started, use these questions as triggers:
What are their interests?
Why are they taking this course?
Do they want to be in this course?
