Fifth graders interacted with their teacher, local, and distant peers over a telecommunications network. Activities included developing and exchanging questions, responses to questions, and descriptive compositions with their audiences. The investigation focused on how the information exchanges impacted students' development of audience awareness in written discourse. The fifth graders were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups where they were instructed to construct an informative composition that would be read by 1) their teacher, 2) a self-selected classmate, or 3) their distant peers. Analytic and holistic scoring procedures were applied to determine differences in the performance of students' writing performances for the different audiences. Compositions directed to the distant audiences consisted of more elaborations, better organization and cohesion, and overall, a higher interest level. Those prepared for the local peers received the relatively lowest ratings. Results are discussed in the context of the literature base relevant to the importance of audience considerations in discourse.
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