RIS ID

11787

Publication Details

This conference paper was originally published as Skillen, J, James, B, Percy, A, Tootell, H and Irvine, HJ, From integration to transformation, Proceedings of the National Language and Academic Skills Conference, Adelaide, 2003.

Abstract

The integration of instruction about academic skills into subject curricula has become widely recognised as an effective means of teaching students about discipline-specific academic skills; however, integration can achieve much more than this. It can involve the learning developers and discipline teaching team in collaborations that lead to such things as a rethinking of assessment types and assignment tasks, staging of assignment tasks, revision of assignment questions, redevelopment of marking criteria, provision of marking workshops for the teaching team, the development of staff marking handbooks and more specific instruction focussed on learning strategies. When integration involves this amount of redevelopment, increased student learning about disciplinary writing is only one of many positive outcomes. This paper will report on this kind of collaborative integration at the University of Wollongong, through a number of case studies. The paper will argue that integration at its most collaborative and strategic is not simply integration of skills instruction but is curriculum redevelopment that has the capacity to achieve transformation of teaching and learning.

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