Crossing Institutional Boundaries: Making Audience Real

Ray Legg

Bryan College

As part of the assignment for this project, students were told, “assume that your target readers are first-year college students at Bryan College, Columbia State Community College, and Middle Tennessee State University who are unfamiliar with the subject of your profile.”^[i]  As we presented the assignment to our classes, we did so noting especially how they initially received the idea of audience awareness behind it because we wanted to measure their initial responses against reflective comments they were to make as the project came to an end.  When the project was concluded, what we discovered about audience awareness in the writing of our students was consistent with our initial considerations, uniform in its application, and, not surprising, typical of college freshman. (For a discussion of the theory that informs this project, see Theoretical Backdrop)^[ii]

            During the planning stage for the project, we instructors formed two hypotheses, which were borne out over the course of the project.  First, we believed that our students would, for the most part, be forced to think more precisely about to whom they were writing.  They were, after all, given a target audience, and they had to affirm their awareness of that audience on the essay coversheet.  The degree to which they were successful was typical in that their responses concerning audience varied from off the mark entirely (the ever-vague “Those that are looking for something that is not temporary”) to the only slightly off (“My target readers are MTSU College students and community members that may have never heard of this restaurant.  Additionally, they may be new to the community, a visitor, or prospective students.  They should be 18 or older.”)  Included also were the slightly more precise (“My target readers are primarily college students (from our assigned peer groups), ranging from age 18-27, of any race, both male and female, located in TN,”) and the very accurate (“My target readers are first year college students at Bryan College, Columbia State [sic] University, and Middle Tennessee State University”).

            The most successful student writers were those who not only targeted the assigned audience of Bryan, CSCC, and MTSU first-year students, but who also specifically adapted their essays to these students.^[iii] These writers adapted to audience by naming places and by locating their profiled subject in the context of college life. For example, "Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is full of inviting and affordable restaurants"; "The Front Porch is the perfect place for a college student to have a break, have some lunch, or take a date"; "College students who live away from home would enjoy the fine southern food at Miller's because it may be seldom that they get a home cooked meal at an appealing price"; "One aspect that might appeal to students away from home is the friendly feel of the Cafe"; and "As a college student, have you ever wondered where to go if you got sick? At Middle Tennessee State University [. . .] their [sic] is the McFarland Health Services Department." Bryan College students, in particular, anticipated prejudices their readers might hold against them and wrote, "Most people think that when students come to Bryan College they will never have a life because there is nothing to do in Dayton" and "Even though Bryan college has a small campus and is located in a small town, it can still make a difference in the world." For these student writers, audience was real, and we get a true sense that they are writing as college students to other college students outside their own immediate environments.  (To view the essays from which these and other quotations were excerpted, visit Not Quite Shakespeare, but It Will Do: Campus and Community Profiles by Tennessee College and University Students.)

            Our second hypothesis suggested that using computers to communicate via email would affect the ways in which students related to each other as peer critics.  It did.  Initially, and somewhat surprisingly, many of the students formed preconceived notions about the members of their peer group based solely on e-mail aliases.  In my class at Bryan College, one student commented, “Boy, this will be great.  I have a Princess in my group,” and others followed saying things like, “Well, I have a ‘wildkitty’ or a ‘BooGirl’ in my group.”  I required my students to use their institutional e-mail address for two reasons: (1) to get them used to using the system and (2) to make it be easier to communicate with them using a distribution list on our network.  Upon reflection, it seems that this was a good decision.  It seems to have kept them from being prejudged by peer group members.     

Another said, “I found simply having feedback from a [real audience] I didn’t know and couldn’t see to be helpful.  I felt I was getting “straight-up” feedback without the overall “politeness” found in peer groups conducted in person.”  Finally,  a different student wrote, "Collaborating with the peers from [the other schools] taught me that my writing was not bad but just need [sic] a few little adjustments."  From these comments it becomes clear that our observations about the students were accurate.  This last student is typical of many who saw their writing in a different light as they prepared it for a "real" audience.  On the whole, students became more confident in their writing and as they exchanged information with members of their "audience" they did so with greater determination and desire to do well.  In the end they discovered that writing to real people in real places had a dramatic effect on the quality of their work.  For the most part, the students felt, as one put it, that, “The students at the other schools showed me the difference in writing styles and that my style and interests are different from theirs."  While not all of the comments about the project were positive, on the whole, the negative ones tended to be concerned with the technical aspects of the process rather than matters of audience awareness. (These and many other student observations can be found in their reflective comments.)

            Interesting also is the uniform way in which students involved in the project saw their opinions of their peers change over the course of the collaboration.  For example, an MTSU student wrote, “I was also surprised how one of my peers was from Nigeria, but is going to a Christian college in Tennessee.  She seemed like a normal, interesting person.”  Similarly, a Bryan student wrote,

I did not expect the students from MTSU and CSCC to evaluate my essay so intensely. When I began revising my essay, the comments they made showed me a lot of mistakes I would have otherwise overlooked.  The peer evaluations did help me a lot.  I believe that the electronic peer group idea is a good one.

Another said,  “I really appreciate my peers’ responses.  They were very straightforward and factual.  They were also able [to] see some mistakes and how to correct.  I felt proud when both of my peers commented on the quality of my essay.” Especially important here, are the comments made by the students at Columbia State Community College.  One wrote, “I enjoyed getting to know both of my peer group members and telling them about myself. [. . .] Collaborating with other students taught me that even though someone is critical about your writing, they are just trying to help you do better in writing a paper.”

            Also as a consequence of cross-institutional peer collaboration, students experienced a change in how they perceived themselves as writers. They came to be more confident about their writing. “I never consider myself a fabulous writer," admits one student, "but at least now I have a little more confidence in what I write.  I also learned about two new places.  Both seem worth visiting.  All in all, I really enjoyed this experience [sic].”  Another CSCC student demonstrates the positive aspects of broadening peer group collaboration.  He wrote: 

Many of the students felt the same way.  They may have expressed it in different terms but their conclusion was the same.  Looking at their writing from the vantage point of a larger audience was a positive, self-affirming experience.  Being the only member of our team who has taught in all three settings, I suspected this would happen because I have seen it time and time again.  The students at the Community College generally feel somewhat deficient when compared to their peers in other schools.  I was happy to see that myth dispelled at least in the minds of some of the students.

            This project revealed that the students were in most ways typical of college freshmen who must, often for the first time, consider to whom they are writing and that they are relatively insecure about their ability to write well.    For example, one student wrote, “This helped me to see what level my writing was on, and how it compared to the level of these other students.  I feel a little more confident now in my writing because I am on the same level as these students.”  And from another we read, “The over all [sic] experience was quite different, but the difference is what made it unique and fun.  I enjoyed writing this essay and getting responses from others outside my peer group.”  It appears that communicating across institutional boundaries, according to one student “taught me that my writing was not bad but just need [sic] a few little adjustments.  In addition, another thing that I learned is that their papers were just as good as mine and not expertly written.”   Again, it seems that there was a general sense or feeling of inadequacy on the part of some of the students which was dispelled by this project. 

        This collaborative project gave students an opportunity to look at their world and themselves through the eyes of an outsider and for the most part they succeeded.^[iv] Would they have otherwise?  Probably.  But it is certain that they did for our project and that change in perspective, we hope, made a difference which they will carry throughout their writing careers.

In "The Use of Computers in the Assessment of Student Learning," Nora Mogey and Helen Watt note, "Technology can be important in the assessment of transferable skills, and can be used to promote collaborative assessments, shared between more than one subject area. [. . .]. this can be a useful means of promoting a deeper understanding of many of the issues relating to the use of and evaluation of technology.” As writing instructors guiding the project, we would agree.  Our findings are consistent with those of Baker, et al. who found that participants in their project reacted similarly.  They note: “The project had considerable impact on teachers, with reports of challenge and growth on the one hand and stress and demand on the other.  Teachers remarked on a variety of benefits of [their] experience, for themselves as professionals and for their students, and appeared to be constructing new interpretations of their own and their students’ abilities” (10).  They conclude that use of technology in the classroom "may have had selective positive impact on writing and on student attitudes, particularly as projects matured [. . .] ." (18). As our students gained greater confidence in their abilities as writers, another positive impact we saw in their writing was their greater sense of audience and subsequent follow through with audience adaptation. Audience adaptation, to us, is one of the most sophisticated aspects of effective writing and the hardest to learn, so we were pleased to see evidence of that adaptation in the writing of our students. (See Conclusions)