Improving student writing: working in partnership to develop the Student Academic Literacy Tool (SALT). (Project Report)

Abstract

Developing an effective academic writing style can be a crucial determinant for degree success in undergraduate programmes which rely almost exclusively on written assessments to measure academic ability. The SALT project has brought together academic staff and students to develop an accessible and useful tool to enable students to recognise the characteristics of academic writing which need to be developed in order to be successful in written assessments. Crucial to the success of the project so far has been the involvement of student research partners as co-creators and owners of the tool. This report describes the development of the project and presents a model of partnership working in academic research which recognises the importance of students as owners of co-created research outputs and intellectual property.

Reflecting gendered experiences of student-staff partnership: a student standpoint using poetic transcription

“…Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez (2013, 17) argue the value for collaborative autoethnography, describing it as: 'a group of researchers pooling their stories to find some commonalities and differences … to discover the meanings of the stories in relation to their socio-cultural contexts.' The method of selfstudy we have chosen is that of guided reflective narrative-a method of data collection typical of both autoethnography and the exploration of partnership in higher education (Becker et al 2015, Seale et al 2015.…”

Making assessment accessible: a student–staff partnership perspective

“…The creation of a Student Academic Literacy Tool, cocreated by staff and students of Teesside University, and aiming to provide an accessible guide to academic writing, has similarly reported on increased student understanding and engagement (Becker, Shahverdi, Spence, Kennedy, & Rayment, 2016). At the University of Leicester's School of Law, the GRAFT project engaged student and staff in the co-creation of 'street' version of the assessment criteria and descriptors (Becker, Kennedy, Shahverdi, & Spence, 2015. It is on this project that the remainder of our contribution will now focus as a practical case-study of ways in which student assessment literacy can be enhanced through student-staff collaboration.…”