Writing & Authentic Audiences

In researching the effects authentic audiences have on students, I found a paper written back when I was in middle school by Gayle Allen and Ann Thompson on the effects of computer assisted collaboration on writing (Allen & Thompson, 1994). Back then the computer assisted collaboration was emailing students papers to mentor college students and the college students emailing back their comments. While it is not the Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword, or wikis of today, it was collaborative and did provide students with an audience beyond their teacher.

The study compared the students in the experimental group, those that sent their work via email to the college students, to students in the control group, those who papers were read and commented on only by their teachers (Allen & Thompson, 1994). The report found that students in the experimental group wrote more and received higher markers than those in the control group (Allen & Thompson, 1994). When the results were looked at by gender, the study found that men in the experimental group preform significantly better the control group when comparing the holistic writing scores (Allen & Thompson, 1994). There was no statistical difference in the holistic writing score for females between the control and experimental groups (Allen & Thompson, 1994). However, the study found that females who previously did not utilize the computer in the classroom where comfortable with computer when it was introduced in a supportive, learning environment(Allen & Thompson, 1994).

The paper concludes with the thoughts that the collaborative writing environment can enrich the classroom writing environment and promote writing as a social interaction and cognitive process (Allen & Thompson, 1994).

While the tools may have evolve, this study shows that authentic audiences positively effect students' writing. I would like to think that this would transfer across subject matters and disciplines. I will continue to look for more research on the subject (in fact, I have a few tweeters helping me look for research right now).

References:

Allen, G. and Thompson, A. (1994). Proceedings from The Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 4-8, 1994): Analysis of the Effect of Networking on Computer-Assisted Collaborative Writing in a Fifth Grade Classroom. Retrieved March 22, 2009 from ERIC database.