Authentic Audiences in Project-Based Learning

This week, I worked on selecting standards and a driving question for my PBL unit as well as considering what product students will produce.  The Buck Institute for Education identifies eight essential elements for true PBL which this project will need to meet, one of which is the opportunity for students to present their project to an authentic audience.  Rather than simply sharing projects with the class, students should be sharing their work with members of the community who have some connection to the content, either as stakeholders who could be affected by such a project or as experts who can provide an authentic evaluation of the project results.  This element can be challenging for teachers to implement given the logistical issues involved, which can lead teachers to ask whether it is possible to skip the authentic audience and still consider a unit PBL.

Answering this question requires a look at what an authentic audience adds to PBL, beyond the heightened motivation that can come from new voices and perspectives in the classroom.  First, an authentic audience can heighten the relevance of a project.  Everyone, regardless of age, would like to do something that matters and the fact that someone not directly connected to the school cares enough about the topic to give time and attention to student projects sends a powerful message about the importance of the work students are doing.

Next, an authentic audience, as the name implies, can make the project more authentic.  The most authentic learning for pre-service teachers happens during student teaching, when teachers are actively applying their content and pedagogical knowledge in a setting similar to actual job conditions.  Research consistently shows that students learn the most about the scientific process and related schools when they must apply it in the lab in an authentic setting, rather than as a separate skill.  I could easily go on with similar examples, yet most of the learning our students do is separated from the context in which the content is likely to be applied.  The presence of an authentic audience, whether in the form of experts who regularly apply the content or community members affected by the content of the project, will go a long way toward placing the skills and knowledge students are developing into the context in which they are applied.

Can students engage in authentic, self-directed inquiry without an authentic audience?  Certainly.  Good STEM instruction will consistently connect to real-world problems and processes and provide opportunities for open-ended exploration to complex questions in ways that meet many of BIE's essentials without any consideration of an audience outside the classroom.  But PBL comes with a high bar for authenticity and engagement that cannot be truly met without the layers provided by an authentic audience.