Assignment 3. Week 3 assignment: The University at Buffalo.

Week 3 assignment
In business and professional writing, we know that certain points are key. The process of determining your messages includes knowing what you want to say, developing the supporting points to make your messages memorable and understandable, and, perhaps the most important of the list, actionable. We want those who receive our messages to understand the message, to remember the message and to act on the message.
In order to that effectively, we need to think about who these people are who are receiving our messages. When we write to a group of people who work for an organization, for example, you know that all of those people have at least one thing in common: They’re interested in the organization. So there’s some commonality in that interest. They may be different ages, genders and races, they may have different levels of education, they may have different cultural values and experiences, but they have at least one thing in common, and so we can communicate with them on that basis.
Your textbook refers to dealing with different audiences in Chapter 2 as “communicating across personal filters.” We see things the way we see them, based on our personal experience and world view. Things that make perfect sense to us may make no sense at all to a person with different experiences and perspectives. 
Therefore, we need to know as much as possible about that person, and the dozens or hundreds or millions of other “different” people that we need to communicate with. This can be a fairly simple process when you’re dealing with people face-to-face. When I teach a face-to-face class, for example, I know pretty quickly when students are not understanding what I’m talking about – I can see it in the puzzled looks on your faces. For me, those puzzled looks are a cue that I’m not being understood, and that I need to make some adjustments in my communication methods, by telling a story that provides an example, or more clearly defining terminology, or any of a dozen other tools. When we’re communicating in writing to an audience we do not see and do not hear feedback from, it’s hard to know how well we are doing in our goal of communicating a message.
One way we deal with this issue is to “profile” our audience. We need to know as much as possible about our audience and how they like to receive information, how they comprehend it, what attitude or perspective they bring to the communication. We want to provide communication that is tailored to their perspective; that is clear in its meaning; is logical in its progression of facts or ideas; is targeted to the audience’s self-interest; and is self-contained – all the needed information is right there in the document (or other communication medium).
For this week’s writing assignment, I want you to consider an organization – one we all know and (mostly) love, the University at Buffalo. (Some of you may have written about UB for last week “profile” assignment.) 
Think about UB’s “audiences.” UB has a need to communicate with many different groups of people. I’ll get you started with your list – there are students. There are faculty members. There are support staff members. And that’s just the people who, for the most part, are usually physically present on campus. UB has other audiences as well – state legislators who fund the operation of the campus; the taxpayers who support that funding; parents of students – you get the idea. Think about generational differences, for one example. Also consider each audience’s level of commitment to and interest in UB. Consider what approaches you might take to deliver a message about the importance of UB to the state of New York. How might you deliver that message to prospective students? How would your message, and/or your method of delivering the message change if your audience is the state legislature? 
Choose a total of five different audiences, using the list I’ve started and you will add to. Describe each audience based on your knowledge and understanding of each – in other words, build a brief profile of each audience. Then describe the nature of your message and your delivery tool for that audience. (A “message delivery tool” is the medium you would use to deliver your message. For example, you might post a message on social media for one audience and use a traditional letter for another audience. For others, you might choose email, or a flyer on a bulletin board – you get the idea.)
(NOTE: This assignment is aimed at getting you to think about communication from the audience’s perspective. Think about the audience that is going to read or hear your message and try to put yourself into those shoes and empathize with others. By using this approach, you’re not communicating with some faceless group, but perhaps with someone you are beginning to know.)
Your completed assignment should include the list of five audiences important to UB, along with a brief profile of each audience and at least one communication delivery tool likely to reach that audience. Please upload your assignment to UB Learns no later than the end of the day Friday.