You’ve just been given a task to design a new elearning course for a sales training program. You’re really excited about incorporating some cool interactive features that you recently learned about. This is great! However, before you begin designing your course, it is important to understand who your learners are. This can be achieved by doing an elearning audience analysis.

Here’s what to include:

Who:

Describe who is the primary learning audience
Is there a secondary learning audience?

Purpose for their learning:

Is this a required training for compliance reasons or is it skills based training?

Audience demographics:

Age – what is the average age of the learners
Gender – are the learners male, female more an equal mix
Educational background – high school graduate, college degree
Ethnic background – what is the cultural background of your learner audience.

Existing Knowledge

Are there existing training material on this topic?
What is the learner experience level with this topic?
What is the learner reading level?
What tone, voice and attitude is best for this audience?

Content design

What language and writing style is best for your learner?
What level of participation do you expect?
How much time can your learners devote to training?
Do your learners have special needs (visual, audio or physical impairments)?

Technical

What LMS does the company use (if they have one)?
How will they access the course (desktop, mobile, laptop)?
Is IT support available to help with technical issues?

Once you have a thorough understanding of your learner audience, it will be easier to plan your content and add interactive features that will resonate with your audience to make learning fun, engaging and relevant!