Audience Perceptions before the Proposals

Each student in the class was confident throughout the first part of the project that the proposals for pilot video content would be rhetorically appropriate and well received by Library. The basis of this rhetorical confidence was an abiding assumption that they were the audience:

• “I think our perspective and experiences as students, the primary users of Belk library, will help us establish credibility with the Library staff.”

• “I think the librarians, our client, will find our ideas and recommendations very trustworthy and worthwhile because of our student perspective.”

While these students felt comfortable thinking about the peer audience, they struggled when thinking about the librarians as a more immediate audience to whom they should effectively target their initial video proposals. Perhaps unsure about the gatekeeping impact the client-audience would have on their work, they resorted to truism about professionalism and “knowing your audience” when asked how the librarians might react to their proposals:

• “I think if the library wants these videos created, they should listen to our opinion, but I am not saying they will easily give us their respect the moment we meet. I think it is very important that we make a great impression on the library leaders if we want to accomplish anything.”

• “The library is excited about this project, so they should at least listen to all the recommendations if not utilize them…of course the library won’t simply listen to these ideas because we ask them too, so…understanding our audience and who specifically will be listening to our recommendations and watching our videos is pivotal…”

On an academic level, students appreciated that understanding their client-audience was crucial but did little in their early project work to extend their basic assumptions. Further audience analysis was not conducted with the client-audience seemingly for three reasons:

• Because the librarians had asked them to conduct the work, students assumed their recommendations would be trusted by this audience.

• They misunderstood the purpose of the introductory brainstorming session with two librarians, assuming that the ideas about video content were actually what the Library wanted rather than what was possible.

• They believed their perceived understanding of the student-audience needs for the videos would transcend their client-audience’s gatekeeping function.

These three core assumptions informed the pilot video proposals the students competitively developed for the librarians. As such, the four proposals were nearly identical, only differentiated on minor points such as recommended in-video captions and accompanying PDF handouts. It wasn’t until they received feedback from the librarian-audience on their finished proposals that students had to rethinking their understanding of audience.

Audience Perceptions after the Proposals

Students’ perceptions of their own understanding of audience radically shifted in the second half of the project when they were faced with the powerful reality of understanding, accepting, and using collaborative feedback from their client-audience.

After reading/hearing the student proposals, the librarians chose an amalgamated series that added a video the students had not proposed and did not include a video the librarians had said they wanted in the initial brainstorming meeting. Some students reacted emotionally to the librarians’ choices, which many felt went against both their sense of what “students wanted” and what the librarians had told them:

• “My excitement about completing this project motivated me to work hard throughout the semester, but also contributed to my disappointment in the librarians’ recommendations… Overall I feel that we put more work into making our recommendations than they did into considering them. I felt very much like a patronized student, when all we did was give them what they asked for…”

• “After first having heard the librarian’s feedback and how they would wish us to progress, I think that it was a little frustrating…It felt like they were just making us do research for the experience and knew what they were going to ask for all along.”

       >> Belk Library Tour

Seven out of nine students expressed confusion, frustration, disbelief, and, for some, anger, in response to the librarian’s feedback. While two students remained upset with the direction throughout the rest of the project, most concluded that they had not understood their client-audience as well as they should have:

• “My initial reaction to the videos the librarians asked us to produce was that the selected videos did not encompass/reflect the original issue we were asked to address…While this is slightly frustrating, I had to realize that we presented our supported ideas to the client, and ultimately our responsibility is to create the product that the librarians want and think will be successful…”

Realizing that the librarians had a more contextualized understanding of their needs and the needs of the student body, the students consciously attempted to improve their knowledge by initiating more give-and-take interaction during the final phase of the video project.

• “Once I had had time to process the librarians’ reactions, I realized I had lost perspective on the project. I wanted to see my ideas implemented and had forgotten that we were working for a client, which meant we had to keep their interests at the forefront.”

• “In the end, I felt that the librarians were very generous, encouraging, and forgiving clients.”

• And in a final gesture, a small group of the students demonstrated their improved sense of audience by compiling a special report recommending how the library could support, grow, and advertise the video series.

The contextualized, collaborative, and iterative feedback students received from their client-audience throughout the project was inherently different that than typical instructor feedback on written products. Yet because the librarians were an internal University client and the course context provided a situated space, the students could learn to deal with feedback in new ways that ultimately helped them to develop a deeper understanding of audience.