Although students must understand the rhetorical medium that they use to present their proposals to their fellow classmates, they must also understand how audiences shape the rhetorical medium and shape how they create texts. Surveying audience members can help students figure out the best strategies to present their proposals and, in doing so, can help students address the differing opinions that audience members might have. In this article, the author describes how her students use online surveys in order to gather information about their audiences--information that helps them create persuasive presentations in a first-year writing course.