Embedding writing and research skills within a module

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Rationale 

Most assessments involve disciplinary-specific written elements and research skills. This requirement does not necessarily correlate with lecture/seminar time given over to such skills. I wanted to build student skills in disciplinary-specific writing as well as their research skills through the medium of module content, which itself should subsequently be better understood. Below is a quick guide to some of the things I did which will hopefully be useful prompts, tailored to your own context. 

Activities (independently, paired-word, group-work) 
Technical terms  

• Re-write the technical terms in your own words for peers on the programme (extension activities: other undergraduates, secondary school students, primary school students and so on). 

Summary (method 1) 

• Write a word-count restricted summary of a text with referencing appropriate to paraphrase (extension activities: longer text). 

Summary (method 2) 

• Oral presentation (if group, everyone must say something) with one slide permitted (extension activities: no slides). Groups can take on different sections of a paper, slides could be combined after the seminar and shared. 

Reconstruct the argument  

• Students are provided with text whose first and last sentences are in the correct positions. They are then to put the remaining sentences back into a comprehensible order. 

Anticipating objections  

• Prepare an objection and reply that is not contained within the summarised text (extension activity: rejoinders to the reply). 

Tracing critique 

• For a text, map how it sits within the literature (e.g. relation to major works, recent book symposia, reviews). 

Citational analysis 1  

• Consider a text with e.g. 300 citations, how might these be filtered? (Type of publication, nature of citation, date, where citing work sits in extant literature, and so on). 

Citational analysis 2  

• Text with e.g. 20 citations, write commentary on each of these (Tangential or sustained critique? Same discipline or extra-disciplinary?) 

Comments 

Padlet proved to be sufficiently flexible to set up the activities. Student work on Padlet can then be exported as a PDF and shared for future reference (something students specifically said was helpful).  

Navigating time allocation for these activities alongside content exposition and discussion proved a particular challenge. If students have done the required reading, there is more flexibility to move between these aspects of seminars. I found making selections in advance (e.g. of technical terms, passages for summary etc) allowed more time to be given over to the activities, though this lowered student independence. 

Giving feedback on students’ formative work (which they desired) was another challenge. This might necessitate shorter activities and/or more peer feedback.

Further reading

If you would like some support to embed opportunities to develop writing and research skills into your teaching, contact the UCL Academic Communication Centre (or the IOE Academic Writing Centre if you are an IOE member of staff).