An integrated, discipline-specific model of communication skills development
Ms Margaret Cargill
Language and Learning Service,
Advisory Centre for University Education / Faculty of A&NRS
I wanted the students to have consistent guidelines across the Faculty for similar assignment types - and for lecturers' expectations of student writing to be explicit, so students knew what to do to improve their skills.
Background | Aims | Process | Evaluation | Reference | Contact
Background
In 1991 the Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Sciences were facing a number of issues that prompted them to take action on students’ communication skills. Employers had indicated that graduates lacked appropriate written and oral communication skills, there was an increasing gap between the entry-level communication skills of many students and those required of graduates at all levels, and the Faculty had relatively large numbers of international postgraduate students.
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There are two usual approaches to addressing these types of issues:
- Designing single subjects to teach 'communication skills' which students are then expected to apply in other subjects and situations. However, it is not clear whether skills taught in this way, and assessed through content specific to the communication subject, are in fact applied effectively in other subjects and situations. There have also been reports that such subjects may lead to resistance in students required to take them if they are perceived to be irrelevant to their course content.
- Encouraging all lecturers to incorporate writing skills into their subjects and courses, since they are in the best position to know how effectively students have expressed discipline-specific concepts and relationships in their writing. However, content-specialists can be reluctant to devote precious course time to assessment of writing, and often believe that they do not have the skills to teach students how to develop their writing skills.
The alternative described here is an integrated, faculty-wide approach in which there was full collaboration between content lecturers and language and academic skills specialists.
- to integrate teaching and assessment of communication skills into content teaching at all levels;
- to enable students to take more responsibility for their own learning and skill development.
Process
The integrated model of discipline-specific language and learning skill development can be described in these terms:
- a range of strategies and activities to teach and assess the desired skills, integrated into a range of core subjects throughout a course or discipline,
- supported by a wide variety of targeted resources which students access as the need arises in their particular learning situation.
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The first layer of the model rests on a team-teaching approach, with the team consisting of me (as Faculty Language and Learning lecturer) and the regular lecturer in the core subject. Together we structure a class that focusses on a set assignment: an essay for first years; practical reports or a field-day poster in later years. Clear and detailed assessment criteria are presented, together with examples of previous student writing. These are discussed in terms of how well they meet the criteria, and what could be done to improve them. At every stage the students are referred to the resources available to support their independent learning of the skills - these resources form the second layer of the integrated model.
For this second part of the model to be effective, a number of conditions must be met:
- students must experience the resources as meeting their specific needs when the needs arise;
- each 'chunk’ of resource should address one problem only;
- students should be able to locate the chunk they need readily;
- the specific skills represented by the chunks should be required for success in the core subjects; and
- students should be able to see clearly the relationship between the assessment criteria in the subject assignment, the skills, and the resources designed to help them learn or revise the skills.
Specific changes include:
Faculty-wide writing guidelines
Faculty-wide guidelines were developed for all assignment types commonly set by lecturers. These are available in a booklet, 'Written Communication in the Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences' (Cargill and Bellotti, 1997, revised annually). This text is also available electronically to all students via the Faculty's homepage. A companion 'Lecturers' Guide' suggests ways to integrate the guidelines with course and subject documentation, and these have been widely taken up.
First year essay writing
It is important that first year students are introduced early to the Faculty's emphasis on developing excellent communication skills. To this end we focus on an essay in core first semester subjects of all courses. First students receive teaching about the specific features expected of essays in this discipline area. The procedure then varies across subjects, but in them all the essay is marked stringently according to the criteria and may subsequently be resubmitted for an improved mark.
Final year communication skills focus
Compulsory capstone subjects with a strong communication skills focus are also in place in the final year of the Faculty's degree courses: Communication in the Agrifood Industry ; Grape Industry Policy, Practice and Communication; and Principles and Practice of Communication. The integration of skill and content foci mirrors the world of work students are conscious they will soon enter, and the approach is well received.
Self-access resources
A core set of language use issues has been observed to cause problems for Faculty students. These include problems at both sentence level (sentence structure, punctuation, grammar) and discourse level (information order, 'flow' within and between paragraphs). To enhance the efficiency of the service offered to students, as well as to help meet the needs of external and part-time students, there was a need for targeted, discipline specific resources they could access in their own time frames. Self-access Tutorial (SAT) booklets were developed, trialled and made available, originally through Language Development Drop-in Centres on both Faculty campuses and now online (with some still to be made available - access for Adelaide Uni only). The SATs have been developed using examples taken from Faculty student writing. They focus on problems most commonly encountered by Faculty students and include a diagnostic test for students to evaluate their own learning needs.
Evaluation
Extensive evaluation was undertaken to ensure that the faculty-wide writing guidelines met the learning and teaching needs of both students and academic staff. These included extensive trialling during the initial development phase, formal student and staff evaluations during their first year of use and subsequent annual reviews which I coordinate in my role as the Faculty Language and Learning Services lecturer. The booklet has also been adapted for use at Batchelor College, N.T.
Evaluation responses at the end of 1998 showed that the electronic form of the self-access modules has not been utilised effectively by on-campus students, and that the hard copy form was often preferred. (The responses of external students have not yet been sought.) More detailed formative evaluation was conducted with focus groups and Honours classes. This showed that development needs included:
The first two of these areas have been addressed; the third is still in train.
Areas identified as in need of development in the most recent of our regular action/reflection cycles in the Faculty include a more systematic focus on second year degree and diploma subjects, and on the needs of external students. There is also a need to improve our strategies for assisting content lecturers to integrate resources with all assignment tasks. This last is being addressed in the 2000 Mindtrail project (http://www.mindtrail.com; inactive 2/9/03). A further emphasis should be the provision online of resources on proposal and thesis writing for postgraduate and honours students, and of more detailed language development resources specifically for students from language backgrounds other than English, both of which are currently available only in workshop or short course form.
Reference
Cargill, M. & Bellotti, M. (1997). Written Communication in the Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. Adelaide: University of Adelaide. [URL: http://voyager.library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&Search_Arg=%3FCarWriPg1&Search_Code=CMD*&CNT=25]
Ms Margaret Cargill can be contacted on:
Tel: +61 8 8303 6033 , Fax: +61 8 8303 6034
E-mail: margaret.cargill@adelaide.edu.aulast updated 2/8/01
This page is based on the more detailed paper:
Cargill, M. (1999). Resisting generic-ness: a discipline-specific, integrated, collaborative and faculty-wide model of language and learning skill development. In G.Crosling, T. Moore & S.Vance (eds.) Language and learning: The learning dimensions of our work. Proceedings of the Third National Language and Academic Skills Conference. Melbourne. Monash University.
