I’ve written a lot about the importance of students having an authentic audience – someone other than their teachers – for their work (links can be found at the bottom of this post).
Those previous posts have primarily related to having an audience for student writing, or for having students teach their classmates.
A new study has just come out finding that people performed better on a video game when being watched, and they extrapolate for other activities “An audience can serve as an extra bit of incentive.”
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
I’m sure all of us have seen this play-out in our classrooms when students have to make presentations, too. The study does make the common-sense caveat that this “incentive” might not work in front of huge audiences.
Here are links to the posts I mentioned earlier:
Yet Another Study Finds That Having An “Authentic Audience” Impacts Student Learning
Another Study Points To The Importance Of Students Writing For An Authentic Audience
The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”
The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates — Help Me Find More
And, speaking of the importance of an authentic audience:
Yesterday, as I told my comp class about style and audience and the need to write what one cares about for a reader who wants to understand, one student said the most important thing I've ever heard:
"I've never had an audience in my life. My audience is a rubric."
— Matt Tierney (@figuralities) April 20, 2018
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