Ten Audience Analysis Exercises - EFL Classroom 2.0

8. Assign students the task of writing a letter to entering students at your school who
will encounter your computer-based classroom for the first time. What can they
tell these new students about the space and how it works? What information do
they wish they had had when they first began using the classroom? You might
combine this writing assignment with the student ethnography paper (#2, above)--
asking students to write their letters after having observed the space and thought
about the community that exists in it.
9. Turn your students into computers (metaphorically, of course). From the
computer's perspective, ask them to observe, analyze, and evaluate the humans in
the room. If the assignment seems hard to get started on, appeal to popular culture.
Ask students to assume a thinking persona for the computer in the same way that
Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data, Voyager's The Doctor, or Lost in Space's
The Robot take on human qualities even though they are machines. Ask them to
think about how the machine would evaluate the space. What role would the
machine think it fills? What does it think of these humans who sit down in front
of it? Papers might be first-person narratives on a day in the life from the
computer's point of view ("I was resting here happily, drawing fractals. I was sort
of pleased with the fuschia one, and then I felt one of them reach over and move
my mouse. Damn. They want me to work again. Don't they understand how
peaceful it is to sit and draw fractals?"), position papers (a computer writes, "Why
I Should Be Networked"), or a reflective essay evaluating the roles that it has
played over time (e.g., a hand-me down computer from the Math Lab reflects on
the things it's seen and the differences between the two labs it has lived in).
10. Put your students in the future, looking back at your classroom. Ask them to
imagine that they have come back for their ten (or twenty, etc.) year reunion.
They run into one another and decide to find the old classroom. Miraculously, it's
still there (though it's very likely to have changed greatly). For their assignment,
ask students to reflect on their experiences in the place and to comment on how
the computer-based classroom influenced their education (and the things they are
doing now that they are graduates). The point is to ask them to think about what
they think that they will value (or not) about having had a class in your computerbased
classroom once they have moved on to other places and experiences. They
might write their thoughts in the format of a letter or article for the alumni
newsletter, or they might compose their reflections in a letter to a politician or
campus administrator, urging more (or less) support for computer-based
classrooms.