{"id":4492,"date":"2011-01-17t07:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-17t12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=4492"},"modified":"2010-12-29t14:44:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29t19:44:11","slug":"teaching-about-audience-using-projects-for-outside-clients-a-conference-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2011\/01\/teaching-about-audience-using-projects-for-outside-clients-a-conference-report\/","title":{"rendered":"teaching about audience using projects for outside clients – a conference report"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>by <\/em>derek bruff, cft assistant director<\/em><\/p>\n

back in november i attended the 30th annual lilly conference on college teaching<\/a> at miami university in ohio. i thought i\u2019d share some session highlights with my vanderbilt colleagues. here’s the first in a series of posts about the conference.<\/p>\n

developing a signature pedagogy to cross the audience threshold – rebecca pope-ruark, elon university<\/strong><\/p>\n

audience is a threshold concept<\/em> in writing and communication in that students can\u2019t really progress in those domains without mastering this concept. too often the students\u2019 only audience is their professor.\u00a0 that\u2019s not sufficient for students to learn the concept of audience. (i learned this from gardner campbell<\/a>. great to hear it from someone else, too!)<\/p>\n

rebecca\u2019s comments on the importance of audience reminded me of nancy duarte\u2019s audience needs map activity<\/a> in her book slide:ology<\/em><\/a>. duarte suggests finding or creating an image of a representative audience member when planning a presentation, then responding to a set of seven questions including \u201cwhat are they like?\u201d, \u201cwhy are they here?\u201d, \u201cwhat keeps them up at night?\u201d, and \u201chow can you solve their problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

in her professional writing and rhetoric course, rebecca had her students engage in classwide, semester-long projects for outside clients. in the first semester, they created how-to videos for the campus library, which involved not only video production but juggling multiple audiences, including librarians, students, and faculty. in the second semester, her students created a coffee table book and a children\u2019s book for a local exotic animal rescue shelter, the conservators\u2019 clinic, which now sells the two books<\/a>, which means that you could be part of the students\u2019 audience!<\/p>\n

one lesson rebecca learned was that the students needed a \u201creconciliation day\u201d after receiving their first significant feedback from their clients. in the first semester, the students had particular opinions about their approach to the how-to videos, but when they shared their ideas with their clients (the librarians), they found that their clients wanted something very different. it took a full class period of discussion for the students to reconcile their plans with the needs of their clients!<\/p>\n

see rebecca\u2019s paper<\/a> [pdf] for more information on her approach to teaching students about audience.<\/p>\n

image: \u201cthe calm after the show<\/a>,\u201d thomas hawk, flickr (cc)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by derek bruff, cft assistant director back in november i attended the 30th annual lilly conference on college teaching at miami university in ohio. i thought i\u2019d share some session highlights with my vanderbilt colleagues. here’s the first in a series of posts about the conference. developing a signature pedagogy to cross the audience threshold…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":451,"featured_media":4493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[104,48],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wp0\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2018\/07\/09153604\/155918164_cb8dd42438_m.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}