Kimberly Nicholas
Senior Lecturer, Docent
PEER WRITING TUTORS HELP INTERNATIONAL, INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDENTS TO STAKE THEIR CLAIM
Author
Editor
- Naoko Tojo
- Bernadette Kiss
Summary, in English
Writing well is central to academic success, but writing skills are not always taught
explicitly. This is especially problematic in international, interdisciplinary
programs where such skills help students from diverse backgrounds to develop a
shared vocabulary of writing and tools to decode their new academic context.
We tackled this issue by hiring and training peer writing tutors to encourage new
students to learn writing skills (motivational scaffolding) and to help them
understand how to improve their writing (cognitive scaffolding). Our student
learning outcomes focused on making and supporting a main claim properly
supported by evidence. We assessed student learning through analysis of their
essay text and reflection papers, as well as surveys sent to both students and tutors.
We found that peer writing tutors helped to motivate students to understand why
and how to make claims in academic writing. Focusing on citing sources as
evidence for claims revealed that nearly a third of the class had not fully
understood appropriate citation despite previous training, leading to plagiarism
warnings, which required ongoing exercises and discussion to address. Tutors benefitted from participating in terms of improving their writing and honing
teaching skills.
We conclude that peer tutoring is an effective strategy to help both students and
tutors across disciplines, nationalities, and writing experience levels to become
better and more reflective writers through reinforced motivation and scaffolded
skill-building, and that collaboration across traditional departments and roles in
the university linking teaching staff, support staff, and students was an effective
and enjoyable way to promote interdisciplinary learning.
explicitly. This is especially problematic in international, interdisciplinary
programs where such skills help students from diverse backgrounds to develop a
shared vocabulary of writing and tools to decode their new academic context.
We tackled this issue by hiring and training peer writing tutors to encourage new
students to learn writing skills (motivational scaffolding) and to help them
understand how to improve their writing (cognitive scaffolding). Our student
learning outcomes focused on making and supporting a main claim properly
supported by evidence. We assessed student learning through analysis of their
essay text and reflection papers, as well as surveys sent to both students and tutors.
We found that peer writing tutors helped to motivate students to understand why
and how to make claims in academic writing. Focusing on citing sources as
evidence for claims revealed that nearly a third of the class had not fully
understood appropriate citation despite previous training, leading to plagiarism
warnings, which required ongoing exercises and discussion to address. Tutors benefitted from participating in terms of improving their writing and honing
teaching skills.
We conclude that peer tutoring is an effective strategy to help both students and
tutors across disciplines, nationalities, and writing experience levels to become
better and more reflective writers through reinforced motivation and scaffolded
skill-building, and that collaboration across traditional departments and roles in
the university linking teaching staff, support staff, and students was an effective
and enjoyable way to promote interdisciplinary learning.
Department/s
- LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
- The Academic Support Centre
Publishing year
2017
Language
English
Pages
33-60
Publication/Series
Diversity in Education: Crossing cultural, disciplinary and professional divides
Links
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
Lund University
Topic
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-91-87357-20-6