Activity 8.4 - The influence of Audience

On the subject of appropriate communications, I feel that I have had a great deal of experience with this.

As part of work as a Art Museum Education Officer many years ago, my main challenge was to make a visit to the museum both engaging and educational for any and all visitors. Fundamental to realizing this meant introducing the concept of visual literacy (the language of art) and its application to interpreting all forms of art and ultimately, to the many different works of art on display in an art museum. I also needed to do this with a variety of audiences. The basic audiences were two - children and adults.

With both groups, I introduced the basic concepts and their emotive qualities. These are line, shape, colour and texture. I then collected a sampling of designed objects that were common to all to help illustrate these concepts. For line, it was the calligraphy used on a can of Coke and how it communicated movement and "life". For shape, it was a sports car (for boys) and a perfume bottle (for girls) and how their shape conveys a story - the car often communicates sleekness or speed, the perfume bottle communicates exoticness, exclusivity and luxury. For colour, it was detergent boxes compared with gourmet food packaging. Finally with texture, the biggest challenge, it was examining how food was presented (often juxtaposed with smooth surfaces to excentuate its texture and infer taste). As one might expect, the presentation concepts were the same for both groups however how they were presented to children was very different from that used with adults.

Curiously enough, the children usually had an easy time comprehending the emotive qualities of the basic elements of art (i.e. line, shape, colour and texture) and then feeling comfortable both applying them and sharing their findings with one another - the younger the children the better. However, for adults it was more difficult. It often meant communicating another message that went alongside this message. Typically, this involved discussing how our perceptions shape how we value and assign a worth to things - a cognitive rather than "emotive" approach. Over time I refined the presentation based upon a pattern of success that was realized through many dialogues with adults. Even amongst adults, I saw differences in how this was perceived. For example, with teachers who were familiar with arts education, this was easy. However, when speaking with school principals (headmasters) or school administrators or trustees (usually in that order) it became more difficult but not impossible.

What I have learned from this and attempt to apply to this day in my work as an education technologist, is the need to take the time to understand the values and perspective of the audience I am working with before making comment. I often test my assumptions about their needs by presenting them for review to make sure they are correct. Once done, this often invites a dialogue that reveals their needs, perspectives and values ... and hopefully their compatibility with my own.

The approach has served me well.

As a result, I am a lot more confident in how to proceed in the consultative role of an elearning practitioner. The advantage the Museum experience afforded me was to have essentially the message as a constant .. only the nature, needs and interests of the audiences changed. Today, in the world of education technology, while the audiences are still varied, the messages to convey appear to be just as varied.