Authentic Contexts

What is it?

An authentic context is an essential component of an authentic learning task because students need to ‘buy in’ to the scenario or context that you wish students to engage in. It is important to create a context that reflects real-world complexity and that is as authentic as possible so as to encourage your students to immerse themselves in the problem space. An authentic context will typically pose a problem that can end up having various solutions.

The context does not have to be delivered using sophisticated technologies. The most important feature is its fidelity to real-world problems rather than a high-fidelity approximation of the real world.

Why use it?

An authentic context will frame the student learning experience and promote student ‘buy in’. Student ‘buy in’ is essential to successful engagement in an authentic learning task.

How do I do it?

Example.  “ In North American Fiction and Film, students study novels written by North American writers such as Melville, Hemingway, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Atwood, and Esquival, and they view film versions of the same works (if appropriate). In the course, they are given the role of editorial board members of an online scholarly journal to which they submit book reviews and articles based on their study of the literature. The students collaboratively design a guide for novice reviewers on how to write a book review. The teacher of the course is the journal editor, and an edition of the journal is published online at the end of the semester.”  From  Authentic Task Design .

Suggested tools

One of the benefits of this task is that students are already familiar with using scholarly journals in their units. They might not be familiar, however, with the process (and constraints) of the submission of book reviews or articles and therefore scaffolding materials and tasks can be developed using various tools in vUWS. The roles that students are required to play can be provided through vUWS in a learning module which outlines the roles and requirements in greater depth.

Considerations

It is important to consider if your context needs to be complemented by authentic artefacts such as images or other resources (e.g. newspaper articles, video or audio resources). Contexts can become a lot more authentic with the addition of simple resources. Copyright requirements may need to be considered if resources are sourced from third party agencies.