Connecting with audience

A professional communicator understands how to connect with their audience.

This course will help you understand your audiences, including both internal and external stakeholders. It will look at how you communicate to colleagues, staff and management, as well as how to target your ideal clients, sponsors and shareholders. You will develop a clear understanding on the starting point of communication, and how to adapt your messages to suit. This course has a four-week teaching period requiring a total of approximately 40 hours of learning. All course learning materials are available on demand.

About the course

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to:

• Evaluate target audiences to create specific communication outcomes.
• Apply specialist communication skills to professionally manage effective messages in a variety of context.

What topics will you cover?

• Understanding your audience
• Audience analysis
• Audience strategies
• Communicating with content

Assessment

To be eligible for a digital badge for this course, you will need to successfully complete an assessment which includes:

• Audience profiles
• Evaluation
• A communication strategy
• This optional assessment is due at the beginning of week 7
  
  

• This level for this microcredential is Proficient.
  The material for this course has been designed for students who have already demonstrated a high level of skill in the subject matter. Students must have relevant experience and/or have studied the course material before (at competent level).

Intakes

You have the option to begin this short course on the following dates:

• 17 Mar 2025 (Block 2)
• 01 Sep 2025 (Block 5)

University level expertise

Dr Caryn Coatney is a Journalism Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland. Dr Coatney has been an investigative news journalist in Australia and internationally and worked in many fields of communication extensively. Her journalism research has won global awards and has been published in leading journals and books. She has completed a Research Fellowship at the Australian Prime Ministers Centre in the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra. Her most recent book is Spotlight on Journalism and Popular Heroism (Routledge). Dr Coatney has a PhD (Journalism), Master of Arts (Research and Coursework - Journalism) and Bachelor of Arts (Honours in both English Literature and History).

Course Credit