Contextualized Writing: Promoting Audience-Centered Writing through Scenario Based Learning

Relevance stimulates passion and perseverance. Students who believe the course material is relevant to their lives will pay attention, be intrinsically motivated, and begin to see the transferability and application of content skills to other disciplines. Content skills refer to the knowledge, threshold concepts, and attitudes required to succeed in a specific discipline. Relevance of content skills increases student success. While the professor as disciplinary expert readily sees the importance of the subject matter and skill set, students do not always grasp how the class’ intended learning outcomes will benefit them after course completion, especially in the General Education courses, courses that provide a foundation for a student’s academic career. The responsibility of meaning-making is in the hands of the students. No amount of teacher-centered instruction will give that epiphany to the students, rather students must recognize the connections themselves. Student-centered learning approaches involving such active learning techniques as problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and case-based learning place the meaning-making in the hands of the student and have thus become the preferred approach within such fields as medical, legal, and military studies. These learning techniques utilize hypothetical but realistic scenarios to encourage students to explore the subject in context of a real-world situation. Rarely are such strategies seen in General Education (Gen Ed) courses, however. An assignment involving a realistic or authentic situation that a practitioner in the field is likely to face in the workplace makes sense as a teaching tool to a pre-med student, but not as obvious a tool for students in Gen Ed courses. Given the customization opportunities of these assignments and the breadth of skills honed during the activity process, the inclusion of such techniques could benefit students taking Gen Ed courses. Given the success of this study, which was to determine the effectiveness of using authentic projects to master the course’s intended learning outcomes, the purpose of this article is to promote the use of authentic projects in General Education courses.