This article describes the results from a national project that investigated institutional approaches to the development of student English language capabilities in Australian higher education. The project aimed to identify the various approaches and strategies that higher education providers have established and to gauge whether they have been evaluated by those in the field as successful in attaining their objectives. The results of the study indicated that those institutions identified as successful had a number of elements in common, elements missing from those universities which were considered as less effective. The article concludes by identifying the key factors that were identified by project participants as being essential in the development of successful institution-wide strategies for promoting student language growth.

Learning through writing is a way of learning not only the appropriate written expression of disciplinary knowledge, but also the knowledge itself through reflection and revision. This study investigates the quality of a writing experience provided to university students in a first-year biology subject. The writing instruction methodology used is Genre-based literacy pedagogy, designed to help both with learning disciplinary knowledge and its appropriate written presentation. Evaluative research methodologies from Student Learning Research are used and include the use of three closed-ended questionnaires and an open-ended questionnaire. The results of the research suggest ways of improving the writing instruction by better understanding the previous writing experiences of the students, improving the instructional materials, clarifying goals of the writing tasks at key stages in the writing process, and helping students to improve their approach to the writing experience.

This study evaluates a cooperative learning approach for teaching anatomy to health science students incorporating small group and peer instruction based on the jigsaw method first described in the 1970's. Fifty-three volunteers participated in abdominal anatomy workshops. Students were given time to become an "expert" in one of four segments of the topic (sub-topics) by allocating groups to work-stations with learning resources: axial computerized tomography (CT) of abdominal structures, axial CT of abdominal blood vessels, angiograms and venograms of abdominal blood vessels and structures located within abdominal quadrants. In the second part of workshop, students were redistributed into "jigsaw" learning groups with at least one "expert" at each workstation. The "jigsaw" learning groups then circulated between workstations learning all sub-topics with the "expert" teaching others in their group. To assess abdominal anatomy knowledge, students completed a quiz pre- and post- workshop. Students increased their knowledge with significant improvements in quiz scores irrespective of prior exposure to lectures or practical classes related to the workshop topic. The evidence for long-term retention of knowledge, assessed by comparing end-semester examination performance of workshop participants with workshop nonparticipants, was less convincing. Workshop participants rated the jigsaw workshop highly for both educational value and enjoyment and felt the teaching approach would improve their course performance. The jigsaw method improved anatomy knowledge in the short-term by engaging students in group work and peer-led learning, with minimal supervision required. Reported outcomes suggest that cooperative learning approaches can lead to gains in student performance and motivation to learn. Anat Sci Educ 00: 000-000. © 2018 American Association of Anatomists.

Students in a large undergraduate biology course were expected to write a scientific report as a key part of their course design. This study investigates the quality of learning arising from the writing experience and how it relates to the quality of students' preconceptions of learning through writing and their perceptions of their writing program that led to their report. Closed-ended questionnaires investigating student conceptions and perceptions of writing, and approaches to writing, were completed by 121 students. Significant associations were found amongst qualitatively different prior and post conceptions of writing, approaches to writing and achievement. The results of the analyses suggest that the effective support of student experiences of writing reports requires teachers to be aware of the type of conceptions that students bring to their course and the perceptions they hold about the purpose of the writing program in which they are engaged.

Studio-based teaching is a central component of the curriculum in architecture where designs are discussed, critiqued and challenged in the assessment of students’ creative works. Drawing on Dannels’ genre framework and a holistic approach to assessment, this article presents an analysis of design studio discourse based on non-participant records of observations of design studio presentations/crits and audio recordings of student focus groups and interviews with design studio tutors. Aspects of design studio pedagogy explored are the studio as context of learning and the discourse of guidance and feedback. Findings reveal the tension between providing explicit guidance that may constrain the freedom required for creative works, the difficulty of providing transparent feedback and the centrality of the subjective in design assessment. The studio as context of learning remains a challenging forum, in which the subjective nature of design is openly negotiated in discourse based, to a considerable extent, on tacit discipline understandings.