Coventry University: E-Journals
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Video Tutorials as Academic Writing and Research Support for Students of International Business
Get PDFMany studies have made claims for the positive effects of multimedia in education; however, there is a lack of systematic and comparable research, especially when it comes to video tutorials. This study evaluates the use and benefits of short screencast video tutorials, produced with Camtasia and published on YouTube, in preparing students for research-based writing assignments. The study employs a multi-method research design, comprising an analysis of video-tutorial viewership data from YouTube and a student questionnaire on the perceived benefits of these video tutorials. The data on how the tutorials are used, as well as the questionnaire responses, enable us to highlight which aspects of these tutorials positively affect the learning process. Findings indicate that the use of such tutorials is more dependent on the type of information included (e.g., theory, instructions or examples), than their length (within the range of 3-6 min). Additionally, novice, introductory-level students appear to have received greater benefit from the tutorials than students with some previous academic writing experience
Digitalization and the Writing Classroom: A Reflection on Classroom Practices
Get PDFThis paper outlines the educational benefits of creating digital stories for a variety of academic purposes as well as the professional need for students to develop and showcase digital proficiency. Digital stories fall under the category of multimodal composition and new media studies, and they encourage students to expand their digital literacy skills while reconceptualizing ways in which traditional writing projects can appeal to a broader audience. The article also addresses some of the classroom challenges teachers may face when trying to implement the practice and some practical resources that might assist teachers to integrate digital stories into their classrooms
Fostering Academic Writers’ Plurilingual Voices
Get PDFIn today's global society, a majority of academic writers come from diverse linguistic backgrounds, where English is an additional language. Publishing in most academic journals, however, is governed by native-English norms. As instructors and tutors guiding novice plurilingual writers through these conventions so that their papers meet publishing standards, we feel that their voices and styles get lost in the process, and fear that the academic and scientific community may be losing out when these writers' work is not accepted. To understand how plurilingual novice writers experience writing for publication, we conducted in-depth interviews, followed by a content analysis of the interviews, which revealed recurring themes relating to barriers and gains from writing in English. We present these along with exemplary quotes from the respondents. Additionally, we examine the ways in which the publication world is changing and how these changes can aid novice writers, as well as consider ways in which academic writing boundaries can become more elastic and inclusive.
 
Digital Writing, Word Processors and Operations in Texts: How Student Writers Use Digital Resources in Academic Writing Processes
Get PDFThis study explores the use of digital technologies in the writing of an academic assignment. Fine-grained studies on student writing processes are scarce in previous research. In relation to the increasing demands on students’ writing, as well as the debate on students’ poor writing (Malmström, 2017), these issues are important to address. In this study, screen captures of five students’ essay processes are analyzed. The results show that students handle text at different levels: they make use of one or more word processors, arrange texts spatially on screens and use resources to operate directly in texts. Above all these actions seem to meet the need to move and navigate within one’s own text, an aspect that could be especially important in relation to the academic genre and for handling texts as artifacts in activity (Castelló & Iñesta, 2012; Prior, 2006). The results of the study point to the importance of making digital writing practices visible, especially those that could create possibilities to intertwine digital texts, thereby enhancing potentials for academic writing and meaning-making
A Cross‐National View on the Organisational Perspective of Writing Centre Work: the Writing Centre Exchange Project (WCEP)
Get PDFThis paper gives insights into research conducted within the Writing Centre Exchange Project (WCEP), a research collaboration among three university writing centres in Sweden, Germany and Ireland, which focuses on organisational perspectives on writing centre work. WCEP rests on the theoretical framework of institutional work. Previous research, conducted in US writing centres, developed a model of institutional work in writing centres that includes specific Strategic Action Fields (SAFs) and collaborative learning as a means to interact with stakeholders. By using this model, WCEP has targeted ongoing institutional work intended to establish and sustain missions, goals and activities in and around writing centres. Drawing on participatory action research, WCEP explores the extent to which the institutional work at the three European writing centres correlates with the model. The main findings show that indeed the same strategic action fields are relevant, but furthermore, different subcategories emerge depending on the local context. This paper explores some of the subcategories that differ and draws conclusions for the institutional work of writing centre directors
Evaluating Academic Literacies Course Types
Get PDFEvaluating Academic Literacies Course Types
This poster represents a mixed methods study conducted at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which seeks to determine the merits of two types of Academic Literacies (AL) courses in promoting successful academic outcomes. Its focus is the first quantitative research phase in which the grade point averages after the first year of study of Social Sciences students successful either in the general purposes Foun1019 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Disciplines’ course or in the faculty-specific purposes Foun1013 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Social Sciences’ course are compared. The second, qualitative phase will be presented in future publications. This study is a response to an unimplemented recommendation of an external 2018 Quality Assurance Review (QAR) of the UWI, Mona campus, English Language Section, that students successful in the first semester of Foun1019 switch in the second semester to their faculty-specific AL courses. The QAR rationale for the recommended course switch is that the non-faculty-specific nature of the second semester of Foun1019 is academically disadvantageous to students who have shown promise in its first semester. This study is relevant to the debate over the use of general versus disciplinary AL approaches, one publicized by Jordan (1997) and revived by de Chazal (2012) who makes a pedagogical and practical case favouring a general purposes approach. Underlying the study is the premise at the heart of AL courses: that by preparing incoming students, supposed novice writers and readers at the tertiary level of study, these courses serve to maximise their academic performance. Indeed, this is the premise upon which the required pursuit by university students of AL courses is based.
This Foun1019 general purposes course, introduced for students from all faculties who fail an English language proficiency entrance test (ELPT), places emphasis in the first semester on developmental reading and writing in English as well as on overcoming writer apprehension. Furthermore, a dual language identity – Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole – is conferred on students. This is because whereas English is Jamaica’s sole official language, Jamaican Creole – which has an English lexicon but distinctly un-English grammar, syntax and phonology – is the first language of most of the students. The work undertaken in the first semester functions as a bridge for students, building their linguistic self-esteem and improving their English language proficiency in order to ease them into what is considered the bona fide AL focus of the second semester: ‘Writing from Sources’. This latter focus is shared with one-semester, faculty-specific purposes AL courses, populated by students who pass or are exempt from the ELPT. These courses seek to respond to the AL development needs of individual faculties’ constituent departments. To do this, they employ as much of a specific purposes AL approach as is possible given the wide range of parent disciplines involved. The Foun1013 course featured in this study, which is pursued by Faculty of Social Sciences students exclusively, falls into this faculty-specific category of UWI AL courses.
The Foun1019 and Foun1013 Year 1 student groups being compared have both been certified at the end of their first year of study to possess a satisfactory level of English language proficiency on the basis of attaining passing grades at the end of Semester two in their final and major AL assignment: a 1200-word documented expository essay scored via a common holistic rubric. To ensure further comparability of the two groups, control of the potentially influential independent variables of Socioeconomic Status (SES), Gender, Intellectual Aptitude (as estimated via matriculation qualifications) and other selected variables is accounted for by the multiple regression analysis component of the overall study design. To address the unevenness of the size of the two study populations, that is, the relatively small number (51) of Year 1 Foun1019 Social Sciences students versus the high number (630) of their Foun1013 counterparts, the Tukey test of statistical significance for unequal group sizes will be applied.
To assess the groups’ relative academic performance, the official UWI measurement standard, Grade Point Average (GPA), is used. This measurement shows the typical course result of a student for a semester or year, and ultimately determines the quality of degree awarded (for example, First Class Honours, Lower Second Class Honours, Pass). This measurement encompasses nine bands ranging from 0.00-1.29 to 4.00-4.30 points. The points in question represent the numerical value given to letter grades, e.g. C+ (55-59%) = 2.30 points, F2 (40-44%) = 1.30 points. Grade points are determined by multiplying the points earned by the credit weighting of the course, which is based on the duration of the course (whether one or two semesters). Students earn three credits for one-semester courses, and six credits for two-semester ones. 2.00 is the minimum grade point deemed acceptable (University of the West Indies, 2014).
The investigation reveals that the overall Year 1 student pass rates for Foun1013 and Foun1019 at the end of the second semester of the 2017/18 academic year were 60.2% (630/1047) and 62.2% (51/82) respectively. Preliminary findings on the GPAs of the passing groups are as follows: 1) Foun1013 students’ GPAs are more widely spread across the band ranges than those of Foun1019 students; 2) The modal band range of the two groups is 2.30-2.99: 42.6% (269/630) of Foun1013 students versus 54.9% (28/51) of Foun1019 students; 3) The GPAs of 41.9% (264/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the four highest band ranges (3.00-4.29) versus 25.5% (13/51) for Foun1019 students; 4) The GPAs of 10.6% (66/630) of the Foun1013 students fall into the 2:00-2:29 (just acceptable) band range versus 15.7% (8/51) for 1019 students; 5) The GPAs of 4.9% (31/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the three lowest band ranges (0.00 -1.99) versus 3.9% (2/51) for Foun1019 students. Thus, overall, the Year 1 Foun1013 specific purposes students outperformed their Foun1019 general counterparts with respect to their higher band ranges, but the modal range of scores for both groups (a low but acceptable one) was the same; in addition, the Foun1019 group had slightly better outcomes in terms of its lower proportion of students with poor GPAs (under 2.0). Therefore, this cross-tabulation of the two groups’ GPAs reveals that student success in the general purposes course is not more highly correlated with Year 1 academic failure than student success in the faculty-specific purposes course, but it may hold implications for the passing grades received. Corresponding results for Year 2, 3 and 4 students, along with these Year 1 results, will be subjected to the finer-grained statistical analysis needed to reach definitive conclusions, while the qualitative phase of the study will use course content analysis and questionnaire and interview data from students and academic staff to seek explanations for the conclusions drawn.
References
de Chazal, E. (2012). The general-specific debate in EAP: Which case is the most convincing for most contexts? Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 135–148. http://pops.uclan.ac.uk/index.php/jsltr/article/view/90/37
Feak, C. (2011). Culture shock? Genre shock? In S. Etherington (Ed.), English for Specific Academic Purposes: Proceedings of the 2009 BALEAP Conference (pp. 35–45). Garnet Education.
Hyland, K. (2016). General and specific EAP. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (pp. 17–29). Routledge.
Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, M. (2017). What do Jamaican children speak? A language resource. The University of the West Indies Press.
University of the West Indies. (2014). Grade point average regulations (Internal document). UWI. https://www.uwi.edu/gradingpolicy/docs/regulations.pd
Capturing Debriefing and Enhancing Reflection within Simulated Clinical Learning Environments
Get PDFThis article presents findings from an evaluation of a new A3-size learner notes sheet designed for use by healthcare students engaging in clinical simulation and clinical skills sessions. The notes sheet consists of an adapted form of the SBAR (situation, background, assessment, response) tool, whilst capturing post-simulation oral debriefing provided by a facilitator. Additionally, the Driscoll (2007)model is used to provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their engagement in clinical simulation. Two cohorts of students, who engaged in separate simulation sessions, completed the A3 sheet. The study featured 33 midwifery and 21 operating department practitioner (ODP) students undertaking a simulation. Documentary analysis was undertaken to identify the depth of reflective writing of both groups of students. Midwifery student participants reflected on their experiences of simulation at a slightly deeper level than their ODP counterparts. All students adhered to the structure of the notes sheet when receiving their briefing from the facilitator and when asked to write their reflective accounts. This study has sought to explore an under-researched area of clinical simulation: the extent to which healthcare students can utilise reflection when engaging with a clinical scenario within a simulated learning environment
Book Review Stephen Billett, Jennifer Newton, Gary Rogers, Christy Noble (Eds.): Augmenting Health and Social Care Students’ Clinical Learning Experiences: Outcomes and Processes
No full textCentralised Supports for Writing in Higher Education and Their Applicability to Research, Teaching and Learning Contexts
Get PDFIn 2018, as part of an EU COST Action (COST Action 15221 – www.werelate.eu), 43 academics, based at various higher education institutions in Europe, were asked about existing and desirable centralised support for writing, research, teaching and learning. This article draws on the academics’ responses. It uses that data to demonstrate the ways in which the learner-centred approach, typically adopted by writing centres, might function as a blueprint for a blended centralised support model for these four strands of higher education. In order to explore this idea, the article examines the reported support for research, as the data suggest that the majority of the centralised supports that currently exist at these institutions are designed primarily to support research. The study unpicks the mechanisms and approaches that are designed to ensure that research can be supported; it identifies what is effective in terms of supporting staff as researchers. From there, turning to the existing and desirable supports for writing, teaching and learning, I argue that, using a learner-centred writing centre model as inspiration, the structures which are currently in place to effectively support research can be modified and repurposed to more effectively support writing, teaching, and learning in higher education.