In this case study, Dr Lorraine Smith, Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, discusses how she scaffolds summative assessments for Foundation level students.
What I did
I implemented both an essay plan and draft formative assessment so that students had the opportunity to receive valuable feedback/forward to aid them in the preparation of their summative essay assessment. To do this, I utilised Grademark in Turnitin, as it seemed to be the simplest and most straightforward way for students to upload, and review their feedback as well as for the markers to work through the scripts to give constructive comments on the main areas of assessment criteria.
Why I did it
I decided to scaffold the summative assessment because I found that students were particularly anxious about writing academic essays for the first time. I wanted to provide students with lots of feedforward for their final assessed work.
Challenges
Setting this up in Canvas is simple and does not need a lot of preparation (just new assignments with dates and some instruction text) but depending on the cohort size, marking these extra pieces of work must be factored into the logistics of achieving the desired outcome. I usually use one tutor to help with marking due to the tight marking turnaround. Another challenge is ensuring that students who want to take advantage of feedforward opportunities are appropriately prepared and submit the work by the deadlines since they feed into the next part of the work and into the final summative deadline.
Impact and student feedback
Students have hugely valued the extra support at the beginning of the course, and it has also improved the quality of students’ essays and understanding of crucial aspects of academic work including paraphrasing, argument development and Harvard referencing.
Future plans
Based on its success, I plan on continuing to use this method of formative work with feedforward.
Top 3 tips
Make sure students have realistic expectations of what will be given in the feedforward (ie not grades in this case)
Make instructions very clear to students along with deadlines
Ensure you have adequate markers in place who appreciate the tight marking turnaround
Gillian Sandstrom, Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Kindness, explains the benefits for student belonging of greeting your students when they arrive in class, even if you don’t know their names.
What I did
Recent research in social psychology has found that even minimal social interaction (e.g., chatting with the barista at the coffee shop) can help people feel more connected. I was interested in whether this would be the case in my own classes, so I conducted a study on my students’ sense of belonging. Students were recruited from my second-year undergraduate statistics lab classes in two separate academic years and from a colleague’s first-year undergraduate statistics lab class. All students in each sample attended the same lecture each week but were split by the university’s timetabling system into smaller groups for lab classes. This gave me the opportunity to compare interventions. In one lab students were greeted at the door (i.e., the minimal social interaction condition), in another they were given name cards to put on their desks and in the control lab, students did not use name cards and were not greeted at the door. This was not a reduced contact condition but one that reflects the usual situation at the university.
Why I did it
Many studies have shown that when students perceive a positive relationship with their instructor, it can lead to greater persistence, satisfaction, and even better grades. We often talk about the positive impact that learning students’ names can have on building rapport, but many instructors find it difficult to learn student names, and this is even harder with very large cohorts, in which students, unsurprisingly, report fewer feelings of belonging. Thus, I wanted to find out how greeting students as they arrive in class stacks up compared to the best practice of learning names.
Impact and student feedback
I found that students who were assigned to a greeting condition reported a stronger relationship with the instructor and that this greater relationship strength predicted greater interest/enjoyment, relatedness and belonging. This intervention produced similar results to a more traditional name card condition, which is used to help instructors to learn students’ names. These findings show that even when instructors struggle to learn students’ names, they can still build rapport by greeting students as they enter class. This is a simple intervention that instructors can make in their classroom that could have a meaningful impact on the student experience.
Challenges
More research is needed to establish the generalizability of the findings. The current study examined data gathered in only two classes at one university.
Future plans
Ideally, we would study the effects of greeting students in many classes, with many instructors, who are all blind to the hypothesis.
Top 3 Tips
What advice would you give another member of staff/department who wanted to emulate what you have done? Please give your top 3 tips for someone wanting to do something similar
Don’t underestimate how much of a difference you can make to students through minimal social interaction (and you’re likely to feel good too!)
Remember that even small interactions with students can be meaningful – a chat is great, but a smile, or even simply making eye contact can create a feeling of connection
Try to learn a few students’ names. In my experience, even if you don’t know all of their names, students appreciate that you’ve tried to learn any.
Nicos Georgiou, Reader in Mathematics in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and winner of a University of Sussex Education Award 2023, shares his approach to teaching tough mathematics to nervous students.
What I did
I use current and everyday problems and in-class group work to engage students on my year 2 core module, ‘Introduction to Probability’. I make my content engaging by applying rigorous mathematics to practical problems such as understanding why one should never gamble, comprehending how likely it is that an election is fraudulent, checking the production of a factory, and even producing magic tricks for parties.
I create space within teaching sessions to work through problems in groups by asking my students to do a lot of independent work. To support this, I’ve created a booklet for the module with chapters mapped to the lecture topics. The booklet includes clearly signposted questions for students to work on, from basic to the more challenging and interesting ‘cool problems’ (example recreated below), some of which we explore in class. Topics range from probability problems rooted in movie plots or TikTok trends, anime films (e.g. Kakegurui based on a manga series about gamblers and how to beat those who cheat), serious cases of statistical misinterpretation, probability modelling linked to global challenges such as climate change, and questions used in job interviews by popular graduate employers.
If it’s important students know a solution, I’ll provide it in class but, especially if a version appears in their ‘homework’, I’ll leave them to figure it out and tell them to come to me if they get stuck. The homework sheets also contain questions from basic (the material they need to understand to pass) to the more interesting, which encourages students to stretch themselves.
Cool problem 3. The frog riddle that broke YouTube
Frogs in a lake are equally likely to be male or female and you cannot visually tell the difference. What is the probability that there is a female in the pair if: The pair contains a male frog You heard a frog croaking and it had the distinctive sound of a male. Assume that frogs croak with equal probability independent of their gender. Consider visiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go3xtDdsNQM for a resolution. We will solve this faster and rigorously after we establish some facts on conditional probability.
Why I did it
Probability is an intimidating topic, even for mathematics students. It demands my students grapple with randomness which, for pattern-seeking humans, is counterintuitive. Using real-world problems makes the topic more engaging by asking students to contextualise and humanise maths.
Also, my classes are typically 2 hours long, often timetabled towards the end of a seven-hour day of mathematics lectures. Getting students to problem-solve in groups, maybe a few times each session, keeps them active and engaged. Working in groups also makes it easier for students to check their understanding with peers and provides valuable experience of group work and collaborative problem-solving. I also make sure I wander around the room while they work, which helps maintain focus and makes it easier for individuals or groups to ask me questions.
Challenges
Creating the booklet to go along with the module took a lot of time but, arguably, it also demonstrates to my students that I am committed to their success. Also, I expect my students to undertake a lot of independent study. Therefore, I set expectations early and also make clear what they should expect of me. This includes how to address me in an email (I won’t answer emails which don’t address me by name) and how to follow up with me if I don’t reply within one working day (i.e., come to my office hour).
In the classroom, it’s sometimes necessary to provide guidance on how to work collaboratively. Also, we do sometimes get stuck on a question so don’t get through all the content. Students know that they can still work through it independently and approach me for support.
Impact and student feedback
Colleagues have consulted me on my approach and applied it in their own teaching. One colleague reported that, in their module evaluations, what students liked the most was exactly what I had suggested.
That said, my approach might need tweaking to suit people’s own personality and style of teaching. I consider teaching as a performance and, although my expectations around their engagement and application remain very high, I am quite informal with my students and am happy to be interrupted. This doesn’t work for everyone so, for others, it might mean planning in more space for students to ask questions. Also, my approach isn’t necessarily preferred by all students. After all, not even Dumbledore* had universal approval.
Top tips
Understand why you are excited about teaching the material – if you aren’t excited then maybe the material shouldn’t be taught in the classroom.
Always be alert to what the students see in their everyday lives – motivate them by bringing it into the classroom.
Don’t worry if something doesn’t go right the first (or second or third) time around – it happens to the best of us. Be honest about it with yourself and your students – an email to ask them what they think went wrong will help you prepare or design differently for next time (and is much better for everyone than your students just grumbling to one another via social media).
*Fictional. Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Famous alumni: Harry Potter.
In this case study, Senior Lecturer and award-winning teacher of Economics, Dr C. Rashaad Shabab, talks about how he is using podcasts as an innovative new assessment mode at Sussex.
What I did
I offered podcasts as an innovative new assessment mode for my module Topics in Growth and Inequality, which is a completely new module that I developed last year for the Economics Department. The assignment was to present a 3-minute micro podcast on something that related to inequality in the real world that used models, insights or empirical studies covered in class. Students had access to the Audacity software package, and I posted a link to a good YouTube tutorial on using Audacity on Canvas.
Why I did it
This assessment mode came out of a discussion with Professor Barry Reilly about formulating innovative assessments that could easily be highlighted by students to potential employers. First, we wanted students to go to the labour market with an asset that they could showcase to employers on LinkedIn to set their applications apart. Second, most assessments are tiring and anxiety-inducing for students. We wanted to make an assessment that was fun and engaging. Third, during the pandemic, there was a structural shift in content consumption that is here to stay – podcasts and streaming are the new tools for professional and academic engagement and infotainment. We were not teaching these skills to our students. We wanted to fill this gap between skills and labour market demands and the skills that our students were graduating with.
Impact and student feedback
Students loved it! I could tell they were having fun while doing their podcasts. It got a wider group of students to excel than would have done using traditional assessment modes. Also, this assignment ensured that students with reasonable adjustments were not being assessed in inferior ways to their classmates. We wanted to craft an assessment that maintained its integrity for a wider cross-section of students to make sure that diverse students could engage with equally enriching assessments as their peers.
Challenges
The assessment was individual so there was some time involved in marking and providing feedback on it. However, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the podcasts as well, whereas typical assessment marking can be a bit tedious! It also meant less work in terms of designing reasonable adjustments
Future plans
I plan to keep this assessment mode for the future. The only change I have made is that I have changed the formal type of assessment from ‘presentation’ to ‘media’. This enables a 7-day late period, which I think is appropriate for this type of assessment.
Top tips
What advice would you give another member of staff/department who wanted to
emulate what you have done? Please give your top 3 tips for someone wanting to do something similar
1. Keep it compact so that students are forced to think about what is important.
2. Publish the question well in advance and give students feedback on the first draft weeks before the final deadline.
3. Encourage students to share their podcasts on LinkedIn using your module code and name as a hashtag.
Dr Andy Field, who is a Professor of Quantitative Methods and the recipient of numerous teaching awards at Sussex, talks in this case study about how he uses narratives to make his lectures engaging.
Dr. Andy Field in fancy dress
What I did
I am the Methods lead within the School of Psychology and part of that role is overseeing all of the teaching related to Psychological Methods and Statistics. Statistics within the context of Psychology can be a dry subject, so in my lectures, I often use narratives in which I feature as character who uses data and statistics to solve a problem. For example, there is an alien invasion and we explore research scenarios around testing whether sniffer dogs are able to differentiate humans from shapeshifting aliens and help us to save the planet from imminent attack. Within these narratives, I lean into the silliness by coming in fancy dress. In the aforementioned lecture, I dress as an astronaut, I have also been a wizard helping a dragon to thwart a knight trying to kill dragons based on some dubious data he’s seen, I’ve been an undead statistician ending a feud between zombies and werewolves, and I’ve helped Santa with Christmas deliveries
Why I did it
I believe that lectures are a terrible format for learning, especially considering that the average attention span is around 7 minutes. Even with advances in technology, lectures are largely passive experiences. The idea that you can teach in large groups over a long period of time is a fairly wild idea. I always strive, therefore, to convey a sense of enthusiasm to show students that what they are leaning is doable, manageable and interesting.
Challenges
The main challenge is that creating these stories and characters is a colossal amount of work, which is why I do not do it for every lecture. Another thing to consider is that fantasy situations are fun, but at some point, students have to start dealing with real world. So, although students recreate the analyses in the lecture for themselves in their smaller practical classes, there will be a transfer task where they will get their hands dirty with real-world data.
Student impact
I think that if students come out of a one-hour lecture thinking that it was not boring, feeling empowered to tackle the topic in their practical class, and feel invested in learning, then I have done my job. I see myself as an enthusiastic and kind guide who inspires students and shows them that what they are studying is achievable and worth doing.
Top Tips:
You do not need to create fantasy narratives like I do. Any scenario that poses a problem, and that shows students how to use statistics (or whatever you are teaching) to solve the problem, would work. You can bring narratives to life without necessarily having to dress up like an alien.
Interaction should not get in the way of the narrative thread of the lecture. If using interactive technology such as polling, think about whether it will enhance or disrupt the narrative. Interactive technology needs to add something useful rather than be a contrivance.
Creating narratives is very time consuming, so think about whether that time investment is worth the payoff for your teaching.
In this case study, Dr Vassiliki Bamiatzi, Professor of Strategy and International Business at the University of Sussex Business School, talks about her involvement in COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning).
What we did
Our COIL partnership was with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). My module (which is core for International Business students but optional for others) is based on a simulation game in which students compete in groups of 5 or 6 as they make decisions about their respective companies. COIL can be incorporated in many ways, and to create a more authentic collaborative experience in my modules, students from the UNAM joined teams as consultants to offer guidance and strategic advice. The great thing about COIL is that international collaboration is easily facilitated using technology that students are already familiar with, such as WhatsApp, Facebook or Viber.
Why we did it
The Business School is keen to expand our COIL offerings. This is because cultural awareness and cultural competencies are essential in today’s world. Not all students can participate in study abroad programmes so COIL is an inclusive and accessible way for all students to deepen their cultural awareness. To highlight the importance of international collaboration, I led an additional seminar in this module on the changing workplace and the importance of global teams. We discussed the problems and challenges of global engagement in the workplace, which students experienced for themselves as they navigated language and time differences.
Impact and student feedback
Student engagement varied across both modules. Students from the University of Mexico were extremely motivated and provided detailed feedback. For those students, who are predominately of Mexican origin, the COIL initiative offered them the opportunity to connect with students from around the world and experience first-hand how global teams are collaborating and evolving. However, some of my students were not as engaged in the COIL component as I would have hoped. This is perhaps because students on the International Business course are already a very diverse cohort and are already familiar with the benefits of teamworking with international partners. While I think that the experience was beneficial for all, I imagine that it would have the most impact for modules that are not as culturally diverse.
Challenges
This was my first experience of including a COIL element in my International Business Strategy module and there were a few challenges along the way. From a student-perspective, the first challenge was that it created another barrier for international students who have less facility in English. The second challenge was the time difference; the UK has a sevenhour difference with Mexico which further complicated the collaboration among the teams, despite the virtual facilities of the engagement. From an administrative point of view, it was difficult and time-consuming organising students into groups. I hope to solve this problem next time by organising our students into companies and then asking faculty at the University of Mexico to assign consultants to each company.
Future plans
I plan on incorporating COIL in future modules, but I might consider working with a European University so that there is less of a time difference, which would make it easier for students to schedule group meetings. To simplify the collaborative process, I will ask students to assign each other specific roles within the group relating to the COIL collaboration. For instance, one student might coordinate with the international consultants whilst another records the minutes. I will also include a graded assignment that asks students to reflect on the COIL component of the modules, as I believe this will increase student engagement. I am also working with Educational Enhancement to develop resources for students that will help them to maximise their experience working with different technologies.
Top tips
What advice would you give another member of staff/department who wanted to
emulate what you have done? Please give your top 3 tips for someone wanting to do something similar
1. Educate the students on the benefits and challenges of this collaboration but also on how important this experience is for their professional development. Have a guest speaker from the industry to comment on this new reality for validation if possible.
2. Allow time in class (or in the seminars) for students to reflect on their experience with their international collaborators and showcase best practices accordingly. Compare and contrast cases of high and low engagement (if available), so that it is easier for the students to appreciate the benefits of such a collaboration.
3. Work closely with the International Team, who can provide you with amazing support throughout the engagement.
In this case study, Dr Doug Haynes, Reader in American Literature and Visual Culture, discusses the creation of the interdisciplinary Liberal Arts BA at Sussex.
What we did
In collaboration with an Advisory Board that assembled specialists from museums, activist organisations, think-tanks, NGOs, journalism, broadcasting, PR and communications, we developed a degree that combines theory and practice across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Working with experts in different academic fields, Liberal Arts students at Sussex use interdisciplinary thinking to tackle complex problems and global challenges as well as develop skills in a range of media and methods with which to articulate their knowledge. Students also work with our external partners to transform research into practice as they design campaigns and policy initiatives, or work with museums, writers, and activists. All students also undertake a substantial final year project in the community.
Why we did it
We wanted to show the importance and relevance of the humanities and social sciences at a time when they are being increasingly devalued. And we wanted students to experience the practical applications of these subjects in order to understand their capacity to make active contributions to the world.
Studying the humanities doesn’t have to be disconnected from real life. In fact, putting the discourses of the humanities and social sciences in conversation with one another, and with real-world issues, creates new kinds of knowledge and allows for degrees to be shaped in new ways. Approaching global problems from different perspectives cuts across disciplinary boundaries and encourages students to apply concepts creatively, addressing and reflecting on the most pressing issues that face us today. In this sense, the Liberal Arts degree recalls Sussex’s interdisciplinary roots to offer a disruptive and innovative contemporary learning experience. We developed this degree with Sussex’s employability initiatives specifically in mind: our pedagogical strategies were planned in direct dialogue with our Advisory Board members from a range of sectors. Interdisciplinary learning fosters critical thinking and innovation because it asks students to synthesise ideas and consider alternative ways of acquiring knowledge, but we also teach critical and life-skills that have direct application to a range of sectors.
Impact and student feedback
The Liberal Arts degree at Sussex asks students to think outside of the disciplinary confines that they are used to from studying A-levels. Thus, at first, they can feel a bit confused as they are challenged to think in more expansive and creative ways. Yet once students feel more comfortable with this new way of thinking, they find it empowering. Students are highly motivated because they can shape their degree based on their own interests. Furthermore, the Liberal Arts degree gives an authentic purpose for learning by connecting theory to the real world.
Challenges
My background in American Studies means that I naturally take an interdisciplinary approach, but in the initial stages of designing the degree, there was some inevitable push back because our approach challenges traditional disciplinary ways of thinking and traditional ways of assessing students’ work. With Curriculum Reimagined, we hope that the Liberal Arts will become a model for disruptive, innovative interdisciplinary learning at Sussex.
Future plans
The degree is very new so we want to continue to foster interest and increase enrollment. To stay innovative and up-to-date, we want to incorporate the use of portfolios as an assessment mode. Portfolios provide a more flexible approach as they will allow us to offer a wider range of assessment modes in the future and to ensure that frequent metacognitive reflection is central to our students’ learning experience.
Top 3 Tips
Interdisciplinary learning is often a new experience for students so it is important to provide a narrative that can help students to connect disparate approaches and topics.
Faculty collaboration is important. It is necessary to know the topics students are covering in different modules so that you can draw on this in your own discussions.
Consider using portfolios to allow for greater flexibility and adaptability.
In this case study, Dr Carli Rowell, senior lecturer in Sociology at Sussex, shares her experience of co-creating a Sociology module with first-generation, working-class students.
What I did
I worked with first-generation, working-class Sociology students to co-create the module ‘Class, Culture and Conflict: A View from the Inside’. Students were involved will also aspects to the module design, from helping to choose topics, selecting content material and crafting the assessment mode. Importantly, the students helped me to bring in material from outside the University in an attempt to better understand class inequalities within the UK from the perspectives of working-class people.
Why I did it
I wanted to co-create this module with students because class continues to be talked about within the discipline in an overly top-down way. Despite the inclusion of more working-class academics within Sociology, class as a conceptual tool central to sociological thought is taught through the gaze of the privileged academic in the ivory tower. I thought that co-collaborating with working class students studying Sociology at Sussex would be a great way to centre the working-class voice throughout the module, not just in terms of the issues and things that it looks at, but also in terms of the material that it engages with and draws upon.
Impact and student feedback
Designing this module with students made them feel that their experiences and life history are valid and worthy of academic, sociological enquiry. It allowed students to reflect on their own experiences and connect theories discussed in the module to their own lives.
Challenges
I was attuned to the ethical issues that can arise when seeking to draw upon subjective experiences of social class within HE teaching and assessment. To address these issues, I emphasised that although I was asking students to situate themselves in terms of the class landscape and how they have been affected by class, they did not need to share these insights with everyone. I also encouraged students to be mindful of the language that we use when it comes to class since there is a lot of derogatory language that surrounds class and class-based issues. I wanted to create a safe space, so I approached the subject of class as a potentially sensitive topic.
Future plans
I have recently been awarded funding from Education and Innovation Fund for the project ‘A View from Within: Pedagogy, Practice & Possibilities’. The project, drawing upon student conducted focus groups, and an end of project dissemination event project aims to have a positive impact on the learning experience of all students, by influencing the teaching practice and curriculum design of those working in higher education at Sussex and beyond. It aims to encourage others (beyond the discipline of sociology) to adopt the pedagogical practice of taking “a view from within” as a way of fostering HE curriculums that are inclusive of working-class knowledge(s) thus reflecting the larger society in which UKHE operates within and challenging the classed politics of knowledge production.
Top 3 tips
Collaborate with students to pool interests and resources that go beyond academic understandings such as works by activists, artists and comedians.
Assign auto-ethnographic pieces of reflective writings and diary entries that encourage students to connect their personal experiences with the content covered in the module. This helps to further centre the student voice.
Collaborate with students on the design of assessment. For example, in this module, we decided to include several formative activities that asked students to analyse non-academic material such as poems, song lyrics and documentaries. Thus, both content and assessment in the module were generated by students rather than decided upon solely by me.
Post written by Dr Verona Ni Drisceoil, Senior Lecturer in Law (School of Law, Politics and Sociology)
Writing doesn’t just happen. It takes practice. To quote Wendy Belcher, good writers write. Short and steady sessions will, she says, win the race (Belcher, 2019: 18, 19) … Belcher (2019) advocates for a deliberate and regular practice approach and suggests the 15 minutes writing a day approach over the cramming approach as ideal.
In April 2022, I wrote a blog post about the need to rethink formative assessment in higher education (HE). Building on the work of Crossouard and Pryor (2012, 253), I called for a questioning of the practice of formative assessment and specifically that we need to rethink our approach to formative assessment in relation to the preparation for written based summative assessments in HE. Specifically, I argued that we should spend more time supporting students, within the classroom environment, with writing through what I called formative opportunities. Drawing on the work of Ericsson and Pool (2016), I called for purposeful and deliberate practice; that is, embedding the deliberate practice of witing in the classroom environment.
This blog post is a follow up to the 2022 piece. What follows are insights of and reflections on the ‘Writing into Land Law Project’ where we (the Land Law Teaching Team – Bonnie Holligan (Convenor), Ashleigh Keall, Chloe Anthony, Millicent Ele and I) embedded writing opportunities into every seminar of Land Law I, an Autumn term module. Broadly speaking, my headline message remains the same: if you are assessing by way of written assessment, you should build in opportunities for your students to write, reflect and build confidence in, and with, writing. In addition, I encourage you, as teacher/tutor, to take part; to participate and write with your students. Share in the vulnerability of writing. Share in the conversation about writing, about what good writing looks like in different contexts for the discipline. Arguably, this practice, and conversation with students, will become even more important as we navigate the role of AI, in and for, writing in HE.
Writing as deliberate practice
The impetus for the Writing into Land Law Project, as discussed in the previous blog post, was inspired by the work of Christodoulou (2017) and William and Black (1998) on responsive teaching and practice. In their work, they tell us that formative assessment should intervene in the midst of a student’s learning process not at the end. In its ideal form then, formative assessment, or formative opportunities, should be comprised of frequent activities that help to identify learning and develop the skills required – with an opportunity for teachers to respond in real time. In essence, the approach is to purposefully build the blocks required for students to excel. Students, we know, need knowledge and skill in the subject area. However, in HE, they rarely practice writing in a deliberate way. Though students ‘write’ regularly, the writing form, it seems, is primarily note taking and not developed passages of writing that resemble what they will later be expected to produce by way of assessment output. Moreover, and as previously outlined, our current design and approach to formative assessment in HE is such that few students take up opportunities to receive feedback prior to the summative assessment. In addition, though we may design seminar questions so that they look like summative questions, we have no real indication if the way in which a student has prepared for that question is going to help them build a suitable response for the summative assessment. Students require the building blocks of skills required for the summative. We are pretty good at supporting students to break down and build up blocks of knowledge but less so with skills. Yet, we know writing doesn’t just happen. It takes practice. To quote Wendy Belcher, good writers write. Short and steady sessions will, she says, win the race (Belcher, 2019: 18, 19). In guiding academics with writing, Belcher (2019) advocates for a deliberate and regular practice approach and suggests the 15 minutes writing a day approach over the cramming approach as ideal.
It is, I argue, rather curious that in the HE environment where there is now a greater emphasis placed on supporting academics to be able to write well and produce suitable REF outputs etc., that we don’t attach the same weight or understanding to the writing process for undergraduate study. Writing spaces, retreats, labs are growing in number and popularity across the higher education landscape to support academics. There is, it seems, a collective understanding amongst academics that writing is hard, writing takes time, writing needs support, that it can be isolating and that it needs to be deliberate. Why then, don’t we apply the same attention and focus to support our undergraduate students with writing? It is almost like we expect our students to be able to produce said assignment output by way of osmosis when we would never view our own writing work in the same light. There is a disconnect here and thus the effort to do otherwise in this project.
Building blocks: embedding writing into seminars as a deliberate and collective practice
The approach taken in the Writing into Land Law project was not radical. In fact, it was a simple albeit deliberate approach. We simply built-in space (5-10 minutes) for writing, or reflecting on writing, into every 50-minute seminar in the Autumn term. (Yes, it can be achieved!) By way of context, the substantive summative assessment for the Land Law I module is to write a coursework essay. The writing tasks we built in then were all purposefully geared towards the blocks of writing an essay and were roughly as follows:
Seminar one: free writing
In seminar one, we incorporated a 5-minutes free writing exercise at the end of the seminar. The prompt provided was simply to free write for 5 minutes in response to a short article on the right to roam or the impact of the pandemic on land use and space (this built on the class discussion). Following the free writing exercise, we then had 5 minutes to reflect on the practice and outlined our intentions moving forward.
Seminar two: introductions
Seminar two was all about essay introductions. We began the 10-minute slot by discussing, in pairs, what a good introduction looks like. We then had a go at writing an introduction to an essay question. Once the writing time was up, we shared some examples.
Seminar three: advancing an argument
Seminar three focused on advancing an argument. Here students were asked to consider what makes a good argument and to look at an abstract/draw on an academic article that had been set for reading to draw out arguments made by the author. For note, Wendy Belcher (2019: 68) provides some excellent ‘argument tests’ that can be used to help undergraduate students understand whether they have an argument or not. One example is the agree/disagree test that I use regularly with students. Provide students with a statement. If they can reply by saying ‘I agree/I disagree’, then it’s an argument. If not, then it’s not an argument.
Seminar four: conclusions
In seminar four, we focused on conclusions. Again, we allowed time for discussion on what makes a good conclusion, looked at an example and then allowed time to write a conclusion to a sample essay question.
Seminar five: brining it all together
Seminar five was specifically designed to replicate the summative assessment and was therefore about bringing it all together. Another headline message here is that formative essays or opportunities should link to the summative. It is often the case that formative essay assessments in higher education have no connection with the summative. They should. That’s the whole point.
Whilst there was some divergence in approach in different tutor groups, and that is to be expected, one key point to emphasise is that this approach works best if the tutor also takes part; that is, to share in the process and to connect through action.
What did the students think?
To glean some insights and any potential impact of the project, I asked students to complete a short survey at the end of the module. 55 students of 379 on the module responded to the survey. Not all students replied to every question so the limited scale of the project should be noted. I began by asking students about confidence in writing before and after the project and whether they felt differently about writing now. Of those that responded, there was a 16% increase in confidence about writing. In terms of affect and feeling, 84% (37 out of 44 students) said they viewed the writing process differently with 59% noting specifically that ‘they have a clearer idea of what is expected’. In response to the question, ‘what did you find most helpful about the in-seminar writing opportunities’, ‘demystifying the writing process’ was voted most highly at 30%. Thereafter, ‘regular practice’ at 27 % and ‘building confidence’ at 25.5%. Interestingly, only 9 students (16%) felt that ‘doing so in a community environment’ was the most helpful aspect.
It is unsurprising that ‘demystifying the writing process’ was voted most highly. As with academic writing, Belcher notes (2019:15) that ‘writing dysfunction is commonplace in academia’. There is a silence about writing. It is, she notes, something that is supposed to come naturally and should be performed in polite privacy (2019:15). The reality, of course, is much different. One student noted that the writing project provided a way ‘to break that fear you get from essay writing. It reminds you that it is possible, and you can do it’. Another student noted that it is ‘good way to build confidence and understand how to write/get thoughts onto the page in a better way’. Further still, another student recognised the building blocks nature of the process by noting that:
The seminar writing exercises in this module gives everyone a chance to process and break down their own thoughts about writing an essay. Hearing my tutor talk about ways of writing has been super insightful.
It was also clear that many of the students recognised the potential to further develop the project to include feedback and extend the writing time for example.
Concluding message
Though recognising that the survey conducted here is limited in terms of scale and thus only provides a snapshot of insights from the module cohort, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and as a project is worth pursuing and developing further. Only one student said that the embedded writing opportunities were not worthwhile. The feedback from students about building confidence, overcoming fear, and knowing what to expect, are things that we know, intuitively, are important for student learning and growth. Moreover, the literature on skills has long advocated for embedding in, rather than bolt-on, and thus the headline message remains the same; if you are assessing your students by way of written based assessment, build in opportunities for deliberate writing practice in seminars, or even in the lecture theatre. Regular opportunities, even for 5 or 10 minutes, seems to work more favourably than one-off opportunities. This project clearly shows that this approach can be achieved even in a 50-minute seminar and in a large core module with multiple tutors. It’s a question of priorities and focus. If you have a 2-hour seminar with students in an optional module, then there is even greater scope to develop and embed writing as a deliberate and supportive practice – and indeed to be even more creative in approach.
References
Belcher, W (2019) Writing your journal article in twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Black, P and William, D (1998) Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in education: principles, policy & practice, 5:1, 7-74, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102
Christodoulou, D (2017) The Future of Assessment for Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Crossouard, B and Pryor, J (2012) How Theory Matters: Formative Assessment Theory and Practices and their Different Relations to Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31 (3). pp. 251-263 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9296-5
Ericsson, A and Pool, R (2017) Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. London: Harper Collins
If ‘write an essay’ is an instruction to students that follows a period of input on a particular topic, then students using artificial intelligence to complete or assist them in the task could easily disrupt that assessment mode. But if the process of researching and writing an essay is taught, the level of disruption is potentially lower and we could look for ways to incorporate the use of AI into the process in ways that are useful and ethical.
Academic writing and generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as Chat GPT
At the recent University Education Festival I took part in a discussion/solution room with the title ‘ChatGPT means the essay is dead’. AI has the potential to affect any mode of assessment, so why single out the essay? I suppose it depends very much on what we mean by ‘essay’ as to how disruptive ChatGPT may or may not be. If ‘write an essay’ is an instruction to students that follows a period of input on a particular topic, then students using AI to complete or assist them in the task could easily disrupt that assessment mode. But if the process of researching and writing an essay is taught, the level of disruption is potentially lower and we could look for ways to incorporate the use of AI into the process in ways that are useful and ethical.
Teaching academic writing using an academic socialisation approach
For several years I co-convened the core Academic Development module (AD) module on the Central Foundation Years programme (CFY) at the University of Sussex. This module was taken by up to 800+ students each year. The module was originally located in a ‘bolt-on’ position to the wider CFY programme, and opposition to this deficit model was evidenced by poor student evaluations. Focus groups and module evaluations showed that much of the students’ dissatisfaction centered around their perception of AD as ‘remedial’.
Due to the constraints relating to the way the CFY programme is structured, we were not able to adopt a full academic literacies approach (Lea & Street). Drawing on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning literature, we decided that an approach akin to the academic socialisation branch of the academic literacies concept would allow us to avoid a generic skills approach and would be realistic in the context in which we found ourselves. To enable this ‘built-in’ approach we engaged with CFY faculty to identify and develop areas of overlap and integrate (to the extent that we were able) the subject modules and AD, with the aim of helping students understand the ways ‘things are done’ in their discipline.
The main aim of the module is to teach discursive writing/argumentation – the ability to recognise an author’s argument as you read, and construct arguments of your own in both written and spoken work in ways that reflect disciplinary norms – a core process central to university study. In our experience, argumentation is a threshold concept (i.e. a concept deemed to be central to the mastery of a subject, or a ‘conceptual gateway’ that opens up ‘previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something’ Meyer & Land, 2003) for students new to university study. On the module, the research and writing process is broken into clearly identifiable stages and practice opportunities are provided at each stage which encourage students to view the writing process as iterative, take risks in their work and try things out and make decisions about what does and doesn’t work at every stage, and if necessary to go back and re-do aspects that were less successful. This approach is new to students leaving the school system and the transition required is substantial as they are required to think, read and write in entirely new ways.
The use of a process approach
Having identified a theoretical base, we chose to design the syllabus using a process approach. This methodology is not a new or innovative one, as it was introduced in the 1980s in the discipline of English for Academic Purposes, but when students are expected to arrive with, or very quickly acquire, the necessary cultural capital and skills to succeed at university a process approach can make visible the things that are encouraged and rewarded in HE (see Haggis, 2006). It may not immediately be evident to students, for example, that staff assume they will:
read widely
find out how to make effective use of the library
be able to choose appropriate texts from the range on offer
know to/how to skim read over chunks of irrelevant texts to find what is relevant
be able to read and understand academic prose/journal articles
interpret the assessment task
have the confidence to work in ideas gleaned from their reading into their own writing
A process approach allows for explicit instruction in these academic skills.
In his introduction to the volume Academic Writing; Process and Product (1988) White noted that the process approach was prompted by the concern that ‘we should turn away from our preoccupation with the end product of a course of instruction and look instead at the psychological, social and intellectual processes that must be gone through on the way to that product’. It was overtaken by current genre approaches, but in this video (2022) Wingate argues for its return (alongside genre approaches). She talks about her examination of students’ research and writing practices and, like us, notes the success of those who adopted a process approach to writing to support their subject-specific assessment tasks. She also notes that while engagement with the process is key to developing successful academic writers, in encouraging a collaborative approach to teaching it can also move teaching interventions away from bolt-on, study-skill provision. David Munn, co-convenor of the AD module, elaborates.
The AD module includes a bespoke online resource, the Academic Writing Guide (AWG) which structures the process. It is an interactive web-based resource designed for self-access and is embedded into the VLE, where a weekly narrative about the process is elaborated. It offers students guidance, exemplars and practice tasks in the skills of finding, evaluating and connecting source material to the arguments they intend to make in their essay. It is separated into 3 stages and students submit work-in-progress at the end of each stage in order to gain feedback. This independent work is supported in weekly AD seminars. All of the module assessment is linked to the work that students do with the AWG.
Following each of the submissions tutors hold feedback dialogues, the purpose of which is to give actionable feedback/feedforward that allows students to adjust what they have done, do some more thinking/research, and be fully prepared for the subsequent stage. In this way we embed feedback-seeking opportunities and enactment within the curriculum to improve learning, develop learner autonomy and ensure quality standards are met. ‘Feedback needs to come before students submit their final task for assessment, so they have an opportunity to improve… Discussing qualities of work and how to produce it with students helps students develop a better understanding of what quality work looks like’ (Tai et al, 2018).
A focus on the human, emotional side of academic work is critical to students’ successful transition into HE. A process approach allows for conversations to develop in the classroom that give students an opportunity to voice ‘the struggle involved in writing at the intellectual and emotional levels as well as the struggle for recognition, “voice” and legitimacy’ (Burke, 2008). Students need time and repeated practice opportunities to make the transition to writing in ways required by their discipline. ‘Most students need three to four opportunities to learn something…but these learning opportunities are more effective if they are distributed over time, rather than delivered in one massed session’ (Donoghue & Hattie 2021). The process approach allows for the gradual development of students’ writing ability. It familiarises them with elements of the writing process such as the importance of planning, drafting, re-drafting and editing their essays, and allows them time to ‘get it’ before a final draft is summatively assessed.
Student feedback on the module has become more positive and there has been an increase in student satisfaction scores from module evaluation questionnaires year on year. There is evidence that integrating academic writing provision as part of subject curriculum in AD has helped to reduce the concept of ‘remedial’. Use of the AWG on the module has allowed us to go some way towards synchronizing academic literacy development with subject content exploration. Students engage with the research, reading, writing and thinking skills required by this genre of writing while applying disciplinary knowledge with a good degree of success.
The process approach and ChatGPT
The impact of generative AI in education is still unfolding. Over the course of the last half a year, by the time we’d worked out a potential response to ChatGPT for our own teaching context, the world of generative AI had already progressed. Much of the initial discussions have focused on assessment and academic integrity, with the concern that students will use generative AI to write essays or other assessment types. These concerns have parallels with those previously associated with the use of essay mills/personation.
The current positioning of the AD module and the use of a process approach has allowed us to meet the QAA Guiding Principles for Assessment, including ‘assessment that encourages academic integrity’. We have been able to focus on sound academic practice in several ways. None of the regular low-stakes assessments, including the first draft of the essay, are submitted via Turnitin so that students do not have to fear being penalised (or humiliated) for plagiarism while they learn how to incorporate the work of others into their own. Feedback conversations about how well they are mastering skills and how to develop subsequent submissions support the continuing development of students’ writing and understanding of academic integrity. Students add a short reflective account at the end of each submission that outlines how they have taken feedback from previous submissions into account and prompts them to ask for specific feedback on the current submission – both reasonably resistant to personation attempts. Because the assessed elements form part of a portfolio and the final essay receives only 50% of the overall marks, students calculate that it is in their interests to submit all elements and are therefore in a position to receive regular feedback and support.
In his primer (2023) Michael Webb from Jisc UK’s National Centre for AI sees our main options with AI as avoiding it, trying to outrun it, or adapting to it. The next iteration of AI will likely involve A1 writing ‘co-pilots’ that will be directly embedded in Microsoft 365 – which we make available to all of our students – and be designed to assist writers in generating content. It seems to me that we therefore have a duty to adapt and to support our students in developing an understanding of how to use these tools that will be available to them throughout their studies and later in the workplace. This will involve rethinking how we assess. As Lodge writes, adapting is a more effective, longer-term solution but also much harder than the other two options.
Liu and Bridgeman (2023) note that a focus on a process approach has been foregrounded recently as a response to generative AI. It’s possible we may be able to identify ways to incorporate AI into the writing process in order to help students develop an understanding of how to use such writing support tools in ways that are ethical, and which don’t undermine the learning and skills that a graduate should master. Encouraging the development of students’ evaluative judgement (episode 11) or ‘the capability to make decisions about the quality of work of self and others’ (Tai, et al., 2018), may be even more important than it has been to date, as well as offering practice opportunities to evaluate AI generated text and model ways to engage critically with it.
Conclusion
Many of us have so far only a limited knowledge of generative AI. If we choose the ‘adapting to it’ option we’ll need to think about integrating the teaching of AI literacy into the curriculum, including teaching the practicalities of large language models and their ethical use, especially in assessments. If the essay is a useful assessment mode to teach threshold concepts such as argumentation, and if a process approach is employed to teach such concepts and to make visible the things that are prized in HE, it’s possible that the same pedagogic approach can accommodate a focus on the co-creation of text with AI.
We need to focus on the process of putting together an essay or other assessment, rather than on the end product. Students need to be taught how to manage the process and be given repeated practice opportunities in order to ‘get it’ before being summatively assessed. This shift in focus may create opportunities to move attention away from the use/misuse of AI and look again at the pedagogical underpinnings of how and why we assess students in our own context to see what role AI can play.
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