Academic Writing Skills

• FDY3004 | Lesson 1 | Advancing Your Academic Skills (DL) is about writing to succeed.

Module Overview

• Focus is on developing academic skills introduced in the Block 1 module Preparing for University Success (FDY3001).
• The aim is to develop skills for successful study at Level 3 and above, incorporating discipline-specific academic conventions.
• Students will develop an extended piece of academic writing, from planning and drafting to analyzing and responding to assignment questions, to write an effective response.
• Focus is on effective use of technologies to assist with academic reading and writing.
• Module learning outcomes will be using appropriate language, writing texts with confidence, interpreting numerical data, and describing academic conventions.

Lesson introduction

• In this session, it's understanding the 'what' and 'why' of academic writing, exploring past experiences, and how technology supports writing.
• The learning objectives include understanding the module overview, identifying different text types, describing beliefs about academic writing, and reflecting on perceived challenges.

Before You Get Started

• Listing three things you have written recently and considering their purpose

Module schedule

• There is a wide range of support available throughout the module.
• The university library will play a key role in studies.
• Block 1 module reminds users to watch the short video on the Arden University Library.
• The Arden University Library offers Academic Skills Tutor Appointments, Academic Skills Workshops and Academic Writing Support.
• Library also offers Subject Guides, Databases to find resources, Browzine journal finder, and help on Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism.
• The English Language Hub (ELH) provides Fundamentals of Academic English course, appointments for assignment help, Workshops and Self-study Resources with Grammar and Vocabulary.

What is academic writing?

• Academic writing is a process done at university
• In short, academic writing is 'writing done for academic purposes (Fang, 2021, p. 15).
• You will write various texts for assignments to match the topic, varying in length and structure.
• Bailey (2015) describes six common types of texts: Notes, Reports, Essays, Paper, Dissertation and Projects.
• Its different from everyday writing because you express ideas in student's specialism. Academic writing formal requirements listed by Day (2018, p. 25):
• Precise meaning of words.
• Avoid jargon or 'casual' English,
• Avoiding contractions
• Avoiding personal writing Write in an objective manner

Your beliefs about writing

• Looked at the importance of a 'growth mindset' for academic success (Limeri et al., 2020).
• Office for Students (2021) stated motivational challenges result in entering higher education later such as a lack of qualifications, discouragement to apply, negative education experiences and a feeling of not 'fitting in' with other students.
• Positive experiences can increase motivation and success in student's own skills.

Technology to Help

• Students maintain negative beliefs about writing, but technology can support writing.
• Technology is available to Arden University to reduce the stress of writing to improve writing quality.
• Can have a search online for websites for Citations and referencing, grammar, Spelling punctuation and Quality assignments sources.
• Arden provides you with Microsoft Word functions such as Editor, and Dictate.
• Students can search journals in specialism, but must go to Subject Guide and then choose particular field to recommended resources and other tasks. Explore resources include Journal search through Browzine, the Academic Skills resource, English Language Hub resource and the assistive technology at Arden Inclusion Services.
• If students copy and paste text generated by Al, this would be academic misconduct
• 2023 Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) listed use of Al tools for study:
  • Harm to student learning
  • Integrity challenge to student and education
  • Undermines confidence in gaining qualifications and
  • Bias Stance
• Generative artificial intelligence tools are good at quickly analysing, structuring, and writing text or turning text prompts into audio, video and images.”
• There's issues such as "The content they produce is not always accurate or appropriate as it has limited regard for truth and can output biased information”
• Al tools can produce unreliable information, therefore, any content produced requires professional judgement to check appropriateness and accuracy”.

Thinking About Learning

• Important being student is to think and reflect about learning in being self efficient.
• Ways to reflect in Structure Kolb (2015): an experience, Identify your strengths and areas for improvement based on experience, Identify your main learning points (e.g., what are your main learning points? What is the action plan next?) and Planning and preparing for the next stage (e.g., what are you doing to improve?)
• There is reflection to to be able to draft an action plan with Gibbs (1988)

Lesson summary

• The what, why, and how of academic writing
• The impact of experiences in shaping beliefs and motivation about academic writing
• What technology you can use
• Reflection as a tool to develop you