Outreach Coordinator's Handbook

Jeff E. Brooks-Harris, J. Judd Harbin, Laura W. Doto, Paulette M. Stronczek, & Bert H. Epstein

7. Open Audiences versus Intact Groups

Outreach programs can be offered to open audiences or intact groups.
An open workshop is one that is advertised on campus and open to anyone who wants to attend.
An intact group is a group of people who already meet together. A class or campus club each represent intact groups of students who might be targets of outreach.
It is often difficult to attract students to open / advertised workshops because of the multiple time constraints that students face.
On some campuses, workshop presenters have successfully encouraged professors to offer extra credit to students who attend campus workshops. This provides a great incentive for many students to attend workshops related to class content.
If you want to focus on intact groups, it may be helpful to identify target groups. For example, if you want to target freshmen, you might see if you could present to a required freshman English class.
Intact groups offer the advantage of a guaranteed audience who know one another and may have a defined interest in the topic.
You may need to experiment with different types of open audiences and intact groups to see what works best on your campus.

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