URB@N 2015 (original) (raw)

Abstract

The URB@N (Undergraduate Research Student Bursary at Northampton) scheme promotes and funds staff-student research collaborations. The £500 bursaries are intended to support staff/student research collaborations, giving students the opportunity to participate in a pedagogic research project. I will be working with second year Dance student Rachel Nagy to explore the ways in which blogging can be used to develop students writing skills, and support the transitions from Further Education to Higher Education. Below is an introduction to the project. Project title: Developing Writing through Academic Blogging What is the project about? The project will address incoming students approach to writing as a culture of academic practice. The aims of the project is are to: Develop students approach to writing as an independent learning practice Support transition between FE and HE Use academic blogging to facilitate students practicing their writing, and to help staff monitor the development of writing Produce a best practice model, which foregrounds the student voice and student experience of writing, and the transition from FE to HE The student researcher will maintain a blog, posting 300-400 words in response to each of their teaching sessions (resulting in 6 posts a week), which will be monitored by the staff member. This will be supported by fortnightly face-to-face meetings to discuss the development of their writing practice, to set tasks or goals and to reflect on the project aims and the development of a best practice model. This project therefore engages with: Student voice: making the transition to independent learning Students use of technology enhanced learning Why is the project needed? The problems incoming students face in meeting academic requirements are well documented and researched (for instance Lea and Strierer, 2000, Lillis and Turner 2001). These have led to the provision of a number of study skills programmes delivered through University libraries, including the Skills Hub at the University of Northampton, since the early 2000s to deal with the discrepancy between student experience of academic writing and staff expectations. These programmes are invaluable to the development of skills, but they do not address the wider problem of developing a culture of writing amongst students. Anecdotal experience suggests that students tend to leave writing their assignments until the last minute, seeing writing as an endpoint of their thinking rather than as a culture or practice. This demonstrates a failure to understand that writing is a skillset that needs development and practice in line with practical skills, or that thinking through writing is invaluable to understanding and research. In the arts and social sciences in particular, there is also a requirement to engage in a variety of styles of writing – critical analyses, reflections on practice, documentation, auto-ethnography and so on which require different approaches and skill sets, and are not always explicit to students. This project aims to address this issue by developing an independent study model for students to develop and practice their writing skills through academic blogging. Academic blogging is an emerging ‘new literacy’ exploring academic practice and identity, and is increasingly a subject of research and study (Davies and Merchant, 2007, Kirkup 2010 and Mewburn and Thomson, 2013 for example). The aim of academic blogging for staff is often to expand networks or as an alternative form of knowledge dissemination (Mewburn and Thomson, 2013: 1106). This project proposes the use academic blogging with students as part of their independent study to developing their writing as a practice.

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