Issue of creating authentic learning activities.

J., F., Cronin. (1993). Four Misconceptions about Authentic Learning. Educational Leadership, v50 n7 p78-80 Apr 1993.

I just came across the term “authentic learning” in another paper so I looked for the meaning of it. Authentic learning is to “encounter and mater situations that resemble real life” (Ceonin, 1993). In other words, think like an expert while learning. This concept is familiar since as a student and a tutor I have experienced such learning activities; and personally I found it is extremely useful to motivate my learning and help me to construct my understanding to the topic. .

In this article, Cronin’s is sending the message that authentic learning activities does not have to be 100 percent authentic to qualified; teachers can provide and work on authentic learning without going via proper training; authentic learning activities may not be fun; and finally, authentic learning activities do not have to be real complex as real life scenarios. Hence, authentic learning is not as difficult as what teachers think.

However, I find that creating a good authentic learning activity is not an easy task. When I worked as a tutor, I have experienced difficulties of assisting students to go via authentic learning activities. Many students’ aim of working on a learning task is to simply complete it. Such learning experience may result students knowing how to press a button but still have little understanding of knowing when and why to press the button. The issue is how we make real authentic learning happens. In authentic learning tasks, learning process is not just to complete the tasks; more importantly, it is to find ways to complete the task. The ability to know the process of finding a solution classifies an expert and an executor. For instance, the difference between analytic programmer and computer programmer is that analytic programmer has ability to see from a global perspective of an entire project and provide one of the best solutions. Hence the issue is how we design an authentic learning task to encourage students working on the process of finding a solution in an analytical way rather than simply complete a task.