Writing Centre training scaffolds student support
The Writing Centre is targeting staff training in core course written assessment tasks to ensure their support of students in these courses is scaffolded, valuable and effective.
In this way, the Writing Centre is also working with course coordinators in a bid to lighten their load –and that of their tutors – in the task of developing academic literacies required by their students.
This semester, training has been provided to Writing Centre learning advisors in Arts faculty course, ‘The Enquiring Mind’, with coordinator Dr Kirsty Whitman and HMS faculty course ‘Create, Communicate, Connect’ with coordinator Dr Emma Muhlack.
Kirsty Whitman - Writing Centre
“Having the learning advisors across the assessment tasks for my course means that students get consistent messaging from all sides,” says Dr Muhlack, “and they get support that targets the key aims of the assignments. Students have told me how much they appreciate what the Writing Centre can do for them, and we've seen great results.”
Dr Kirsty Whitman talked to advisors about the aims of ‘The Enquiring Mind’, which takes a sociological approach to real world issues and seeks to lay the groundwork for critical thinking, effective collaboration and appropriate communication of engaging and controversial content. She identified challenges for students in each of the three course assessment tasks and advisors discussed ways to identify deficits in students’ academic literacies and capabilities within the course framework.
“I can always see the students who have visited the Writing Centre; these are the students whose marks go up in subsequent assessment tasks,” Kirsty said. She also commented on the efficiency of using QuickMarks to refer students to the Centre, as well as in feedback in rubrics.
Learning advisors agreed that while they become familiar with recurring assessment tasks brought in by students, it is extremely worthwhile to have the opportunity to hear from course coordinators about assessment aims and what constitutes a successful student response.
“I especially loved hearing from Kirsty about the more creative responses students had to the first assessment task,” said learning advisor Anj Foley, “ – it gave me a feel for how I might guide and encourage students to be braver with this one.”
Anna Mullin - Learning Advisor
The Writing Centre provides students with synchronous one-on-one support in their written assessment tasks; students can elect to have 30-minute mentoring F2F or online. Advisors support students to develop a range of academic literacies, including paraphrasing (and avoiding plagiarism), synthesising information, structuring argument, improving grammar and writing clearly and concisely. Advisors are also alert to identifying gaps in student capabilities and sessions may include support to navigate MyUni, referral to other support services, and contextualising University culture and expectations, such as the importance of academic integrity.
While their role is to support students build general academic writing skills, Writing Centre learning advisors bring a wide range of discipline backgrounds. In the recent ‘Enquiring Mind’ training session, a number of the learning advisors shared professional and academic successes with the team, including Anna Mullin who has just accepted a PhD scholarship at Cambridge University this year to pursue her research in the field of high energy particle physics. There was loud applause for this highly valued (and soon to be missed!) member of the Writing Centre.
Story prepared by Dr Rebekah Clarkson, Coordinator, Writing Support Programs