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What was the context for collaboration?
The FPHS Faculty Tutor approached the ACC to discuss support for iBSc (3rd year intercalated) medical students with their academic writing, as medical students鈥� prior experience involves writing largely for exams and reflective reports.
The transition to longer researched texts in a broader range of genres, and with a greater expectation of critical/evaluative writing, represented a source of anxiety for many students in this cohort.听
What did we do?听
The ACC lecturer collaborated with iBSc course leads across the programmes to provide an initial pair of workshops in Term 1 as a general introduction to academic writing, aligned with assignment deadlines.
The main elements of these workshops were:
- discussing expectations for writing at iBSc level and building on past experience
- strategies for understanding and responding to tasks
- critical reading skills and synthesis
- basics of paragraphing, structure and academic written style.
A workshop focused on dissertation writing was added in Term 2 covering typical project structure and coherence; literature review and critical engagement with sources; expressing stance and evaluation in writing.
We have now been offering these workshops for three years. They have developed over time to focus more on building student autonomy by raising their awareness of the reading-into-writing process, and developing understanding of features of genre and strong writing through analysing relevant student samples and applying this to their own writing.
What factors made this an effective intervention?听
Initial interactions with students in the first year of running these workshops, together with course and tutor feedback, provided a clearer picture of student needs.
Developing a closer collaborative relationship with key module leads in the planning phase for the second year was crucial, as discussions around student samples, specific assignments and course expectations allowed for more tailored workshop design.
This led to a mixed offering of workshops open to iBSc students on all programmes in the faculty (iBSc Women鈥檚 Health, Population Health, Cardiovascular Science, Primary Care) and bespoke versions of the workshops (Women鈥檚 Health and Primary Care) embedded in module timetables, more suited to individual course needs and assignments.
What our staff and students say
鈥淚t鈥檚 good to get an understanding of academic writing when you have never come into contact with it before, what they鈥檙e looking for. I know how to analyse texts now so can do the same for my own writing to ensure I have included everything I need.鈥� 鈥� iBSc student feedback on the Term 1 academic writing course
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鈥�...really helped me to understand what the final dissertation will look like and how I can get there. I found the idea of literature matrices really good鈥� 鈥� iBSc student feedback on the Term 2 dissertation writing course鈥�