Authentic Pedagogy requires students to actively engage in the classroom activities to complete the task related to the real-life situation (Newman, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995). According to Huang (2014), there are five components for authentic pedagogical practice:

1. To construct knowledge based on previous learning;

2. To adopt disciplined inquiry in learning;

3. Learning those knowledge/skills/attitude which has value beyond school level;

4. Connecting students’ learning with life experiences, and

5. The inclusion of all students in the learning process.

It can be discovered from the above statement that applying authentic pedagogy to the actual classroom has several benefits, such as increasing students’ interest in learning, reviewing previous knowledge and utilizing what they learnt into real-life practice. After such instruction, students learning effect will be significantly improved. Also, what students learnt from this class is helpful for them to prepare for future entry into society.

When we use authentic pedagogy in an online course, take one Spanish learning websites (BBC) for example, things become interesting.

In the BBC learning website, Spanish learning is through different real-life situations, such as renting a new house, ordering food in a restaurant and asking for directions when travelling. When you choose one episode, the website flash will take you into the simulated world, and you will be the protagonist in the play and interact with the characters with the target language. Learning a foreign language through this way is not boring at all. All kinds of videos there show me an authentic Spanish living, including food, house, weather and traffic there. These make me, as a language learner, very enjoy the learning process through this website, I always can imagine I am travelling in Spain and enjoy all the stuff there when I am sitting in front of my computer and staying at home. Learning a new language is not from what we used to do, for instance, rote remember and text-only test. How the learner actually learns has checked through these practices in the scenario, and this is what we called ‘learn by doing’.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/ep01/index.shtml

Reference:

Newman, F., Marks, H., Garmoran, A. (1995). Authentic pedagogy and student performance. Conference presentation to the American Education Research Association. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. Ed 389 679.

Peterson, L. (2007). Authentic Learning Environments. Retrieved April 9, 2014, from http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Authentic_Learning_Environments