Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility is it?

Mr Gerard Bourke and Mrs Hannah P. Wilkinson

Office of the Dean of Students, Academic Support, Charles Sturt University, NSW

Just who is responsible for academic skill inclusion, development and delivery,

and why?

The Building University Study Success project at Charles Sturt University

explored the notion of ‘responsibility’ as applied to Academic Skills development

of all students, and considered the differing ‘responsibilities’ held by students,

academic and professional staff alike. This paper reports on the concepts of

design, enactment of curriculum and pedagogies relating to the embedding and

scaffolding of academic literacy, learning and numeracy skills development in

undergraduate discipline content. It draws on a collaborative approach, or

‘shared responsibility’, in designing embedded and scaffolded academic skill

development needs for all first year students, to aide transition and engagement.

The project aimed to meet the ever growing diversity of the CSU undergraduate

student cohort by addressing a collaborative approach to academic skill

development via the traditional content knowledge model, in order to answer the

question ‘Who’s responsibility is it?’

Background

The Charles Sturt University (CSU) Building University Study Success (BUSS) Project was

funded by the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Project. The BUSS project’s

aims were to establish a viable model of embedded Academic Skills Advisers in each of the

university faculties. The initiative was tasked with the establishment of a whole of

institutional approach to addressing the development of Academic Literacies, Language,

Learning and Numeracy skills (referred to herein as Academic Skills) and to develop

opportunities to embed these academic skills in Bachelor Degree curricula. Finally, the

project was to research methods of collaborative, embedded practice and use the learning

gained form this to inform future collaboration between academic skills professionals and

Faculties. The BUSS project did not focus solely on First Year embedded design principles; it

also considered the on-going journey of academic skills development at differing stages of an

undergraduate journey. In all its work, the project members considered the particular needs of

Indigenous, Low SES, First in Family and Rural and Remote students in all modes of study.

The aims of the project reflected the pressing need for the development of a model to support

CSU’s high numbers of non-traditional students, as well as assisting CSU in the achievement

of several of its’ strategic priorities, that are to provide:

Enriching and supportive student experience for its diverse range of students

Course Profiles that reflects student demand and meets workforce needs

The project model and associated agendas align to the changing Australian Higher Education

landscape and draw on the theme of undergraduate access and the widening participation

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

agenda, as detailed in the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008), Grattan Institute paper

Taking University Teaching Seriously, (2013) and the work of Devlin et al, (2012) as

presented in the Effective teaching and support of students from low socioeconomic status

backgrounds practical guide. Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA)

and the Association for Academic Language & Learning (AALL) both note that these

students are ‘unprepared, especially in their ability to critically analyse, write essays and in

communicating effectively in oral and written English.’ These developments started the

discussion of the need for academic skills acquisition techniques to be scaffolded throughout

the degree and for the academic skills development to be appropriate for disciplines and

professions alike. The need to develop these skills is particularly evident in relation to the

Australian Qualification Framework (AQF level 7) standards for undergraduates’ where it

states that ‘knowledge, skills and application of knowledge and skills’ must be demonstrated.

What has BUSS found?

Extensive research efforts yielded little in the way of widespread or systemic current practice

within other Australian universities in relation to the establishment of academic skills

development as a university wide approach. The only CSU wide reference to these skills had,

until this point, been the aspiration for CSU graduates to be “effective communicators.” Put

simply, no wide-spread formal expectations existed about the role or extent that the

university, students or staff were expected to play in the area of appropriate academic skill

development.

The traditional notion had been that entry standards to a course acted as an academic

gatekeeper and that once accepted, the sole responsibility lay with the student for their

engagement and progression in their course. This notion has become discredited as larger

numbers of students from a greater variety of backgrounds commence tertiary study. For

these students, the realisation is that entry is just the first step and that there is an expectation

placed upon them that they will continue to develop their academic abilities throughout their

study. This is a notion that needs to be fostered and linked to their responsibility. BUSS

found that embedding skills within subjects allowed students greater opportunity to identify,

learn, practice and progress with the necessary skills to engage with the particular discipline.

Such efforts needed to utilise the many strengths that these students begin with, rather than

focussing on what ‘deficits’ or academic skills they may lack. According to Jacobs (2010)

‘This pedagogy is not about catering for the needs of ‘minorities’, as they call it in the US, or ‘non

traditional’ students as they call it in the UK; it is a shift away from these deficit models towards a

pedagogy that will benefit all.’

For many years, CSU has made many incremental improvements to the design and enacting

processes of teaching and learning. However the provision of academic skills development

for students with a need for improvement in a particular area could best be described as ad-

hoc. As a whole, academic skill development was an ‘uncoordinated’ situation, with many

parts of the institution not aware of what other parts of the university were working on in this

regard. To compound and perhaps confound the situation, different stakeholders held

disparate views about who should ‘help’ students struggling with the usage of academic

skills. Furthermore Arndell, Bridgeman, Goldsworthy, Taylor, & Tzioumis, (2012a) stated

that it was often seen as ‘someone else’s business’. Making Academics solely responsible for

this development is problematic for many reasons. For academics with teaching workloads,

research and other targets to meet, the explicit teaching of students requiring academic skill

development proved difficult to manage in an ongoing manner, and academics could rightly

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

point students in the direction of an appointment with a learning skills adviser. To some

extent, the role of academics staff was biased towards the transmission of discipline content

to their students and academic skill development was perhaps seen as a secondary outcome.

There is also a consideration that many academic staff do not have a background in education

and as such, do not feel prepared or comfortable in providing academic skills development

with students. Differing expectations held by academics in relation to the expected level of

academic skill usage in their subject further dilutes the ability of academics to perform this

role in isolation.

Why have we explored the notion of ‘Responsibility?’

If academic staff were not to be solely responsible for the academic skill development for

students, an examination of the role Professional staff such as Learning Skills Advisers and

other professionals was needed. Equally, Academic Skill Development cannot fall solely to

people who are not always familiar with the content of a subject and familiar with the

students therein. As a result, acceptances has grown within CSU that there is no (and never

was) ‘one stop shop’ model of curriculum design and enactment of engaging pedagogies.

The way forward was a collaborative approach to the design, teaching and assessment. This

aligned with the findings of Chen & Lin, (2011) who stated that engaging both sides with

developing skills requires ‘a complete culture change’. CSU has committed to build a model

of ‘shared’ responsibility for the curriculum design and enactment of academic skill

development with academics and professional staff working in collaboration from subject

conceptualisation through to subject evaluation. A new conceptualisation of the working

relationships between academic and professional staff for the embedding of Academic Skill

development has been developed.

Research indicated that there were a number of key factors to be considered in such a model.

Jacobs (2010) stated:

‘This collaborative pedagogy requires disciplinary specialists to work within their role as

disciplinary experts, while engaging with literacy lecturers who are ‘outsiders’ to their disciplinary

communities. This engagement allows for disciplinary specialists to bring their tacit knowledge of

the rules underpinning the literacy practices of their disciplines, to an explicit level and then to

collaboratively translate this into ‘overt instruction’ which allows students access to the discourses

of the discipline. This engagement with literacy lecturers further allows disciplinary specialists

some critical distance from the disciplinary discourses in which they are so immersed.’

How have we approached collaborative partnerships and embedded design of Academic

skills development?

The first of these key factors was ‘shared understanding.’ Before such a model of shared

responsibility could be implemented; the need for a consistent Academic skill development

framework was established. The authors researched and developed a definition of Academic

Skills-the first time CSU has an agreed definition of Academic Literacy, Learning and

Numeracy (ALLaN) Skills:

‘Good academic literacy, learning, and numeracy skills are critical for success at university. These

capacities are required to analyse, reason, and communicate ideas effectively as students pose,

formulate, solve and interpret problems in a variety of situations.

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

Effective learning and successful academic work requires the ability to gather ideas and

information from careful and critical reading, listening and observing, and to produce well-argued,

well substantiated, and carefully presented written, visual and spoken accounts of complex

thinking about those ideas and information.’ (2013)

The development of this shared understanding proved to be a powerful tool. The BUSS

project now had an agreed definition of what academic skills development was to achieve at

CSU, and, as such, was able to build awareness of the knowledge and skills involved in

Academic Skills development by facilitating discussions in schools and faculties. A body of

work started on identifying all the types of Academic Skills (ALLaN) needed in disciplines

throughout a degree. It has become acceptable to set the expectation that academics can take

responsibility for their student’s academic skill development. It is anticipated that

contextualising academic skill development as crucial pre-professional skills will allow

academics to engage their first year students in a more authentic manner, and in designing

this academic skill development into the teaching and learning, it will be normalised as the

routine procedure for both academics and students. The design and delivery of this type of

structure is content driven skills development, with the lead academic and Learning Skills

Advisers collaborating to design, support and guide the academic skills development of the

students. This in turn normalises the academic skills development by making the need to

develop the skills part of the learning material and experiences.

Conclusion

At CSU Academic Skill Development has now been reconceptualised as a shared

responsibility between Academics, Learning skills professionals, students and the institution.

An embedded academic skills development approach and associated design principles allow

students (who may be prepared in other ways for tertiary study), more readily available

access to assistance as academic support and enablement becomes something done by every

student and is available as part of a continuum of support, from good design through to

individual assistance.

In relation to the first year, it is commonly known the ‘de-stigmatising’ of student access to

support services is one of the more powerful impacts we can make. The top down approach

to development in this regard is reflected in new CSU policy, Professional Development

opportunities, curriculum innovation and reform (such as the CSU Smart Learning Project).

Although the development of this approach is incomplete and is not without its challenges,

this development will evolve with ongoing support at each level, to create a sustainable

model for this cultural change.

Questions and Discussion topics for the Nuts and Bolts Session

How can students be supported in their first year through the contextualisation of academic

skill development as a continuum as opposed to a series of discrete year on year experiences?

Do you have a similar shared responsibility model in your institution? If Yes, what is your

model/ approach? If not, what are the barriers or alternatives?

What structure needs to be in place to support this collaborative approach?

What are the challenges and issues for your institution or faculty?

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

What about the students - where do their responsibilities lie?

Students need to be equally prepared to take on the responsibility for their own development -

how can we increase these types of opportunities?

References

Arndell, M., Bridgeman, A.J., Goldsworthy, R., Taylor, C.E., and Tzioumis, V. (2012).

First year science: when information skills are someone else’s business.

Paper presented at ALIA Biennial Conference. Sydney

Association for Academic Language & Learning (2009). Good Practice Principles.

Retrieved from

www.aall.org.au/sites/default/files/Final_Report Good_Practice_Principles2009.pdf

Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H., & Scales, B. (2008). Review of Australian Higher

Education – Final Report, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace

Relations, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia.

Retrieved from

www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Review/Pages/ReviewofAustralianHigherEducati

onFinalReport.aspx

Chen, K., & Lin, P. (2011). Information literacy in university library user education.

Aslib Proceedings, 63(4), 399−418.

Devlin, M., Kift, S., Nelson, K., Smith, L., & McKay, J. (2012). Effective teaching and

support of students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds: Practical advice for

teaching staff. Sydney: Office for Learning and Teaching.

Jacobs, C. (2010). Collaboration as pedagogy: Consequences and implications for

partnerships between communication and disciplinary specialists. Southern African

Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 28(3), 227-237.

Norton, A., (2013). Taking University Teaching Seriously... Grattan Institute paper.

Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (2013). Terms of Reference.

Quality Assessment: English Language Proficiency.

Academic Skill Development - whose responsibility, is it? Nuts and bolts

Author Biographies

Hannah Wilkinson Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

A qualified teacher in the Post-Compulsory Further and Higher Education sector in the UK,

specialising in the development of teaching and learning within: Inclusive Education, Adult

Literacy and Numeracy, English as a Second Language and later to manage a multi-campus

department working strategically to raise the opportunities and profile of the Learner Voice,

Client Engagement and Student Well-being and Transition.

She emigrated, with her family, to Australia in 2011. She works at CSU on projects

supporting Transition and skills development Pedagogies.

Ged Bourke Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW, Australia

A qualified teacher, Ged transferred into the tertiary education sector when he joined CSU in

2012. He has worked on Projects supporting transition and skills development, particularly in

the context of new subject and degree development. He is currently undertaking further study

based on concepts of change and development at both the individual and organisational level.

He has a young family and is keen to see high quality education continue to develop in

Regional Australia.