I was invited by Columbia University to design and teach a new workshop to aspiring media professionals about how to create and market content for online audiences. Over a few years teaching the course, I conducted a series of over 100 interviews designed to create a student persona that could be used to quickly describe the needs, motivations, and pain points of my potential audience. Students were interviewed once prior to taking the course and again before completion. They also filled out a short online questionnaire. These interviews were designed to gauge the effectiveness of my course design and instructional techniques. As a result, the enrollment for my course has increased 80% over a three-year period and the sponsor has used my course description as a model for the other courses offered. This same interview methodology can be applied to the subject matter for any course.