Although constructivist theories have shown learning is accelerated by involvement and meaningful lecturer–student and student–student interaction, these ingredients are mostly absent from large attendance lectures. A number of studies have already focused on more active ways of learning in large lecture classrooms, most often by using student response systems or “clickers”. This field study wishes to extend the current knowledge base by providing an overview of how students and lecturers experience technology in large enrolment courses. An intervention introducing meaningful use of mobile technology in large attendance lectures was therefore set‐up and different aspects were evaluated: interaction and involvement, pleasantness and need for future implementation of an intervention. Participants were 185 bachelor students of Applied Psychology and three lecturers. A mixed method design was used, combining an online questionnaire consisting of multiple choice questions using a 5‐point Likert response scale and open ended questions, with focus group interviews. Focus groups with both students and lecturers provided additional data. Results showed that students experience increased involvement and interaction, that they found the didactical use pleasant and that they were convinced of the need for future use of mobile technology in daily education practice. Focus group interviews with students confirmed these findings under the condition that the used technology was integrated functionally in the lecture. The involved lecturers reported on positive effects and showed themselves to be favorable toward using handheld, mobile technology in large attendance lectures to boost interaction and involvement, even though they admitted to feeling unease about surrendering a level of control over the pedagogic setting.

First-year engineering students are disinclined to view writing skills, and communication skills at large, as a core element of the engineering curriculum. Instead of arguing away this student skepticism, we aimed to harness it by way of an action research project in the writing class. Students were challenged to find out for themselves whether, and if so, which communication skills are important for professional engineers, and to write out their recommendations for the curriculum in a brief research paper. The teaching staff supported the research project by providing an online questionnaire, which 443 engineers filled out on the students' invitation, and by offering support sessions on academic writing, research and ICT skills. What the students learned from the questionnaire was that the respondents spend a significant amount of their working time communicating, while many of them struggle with several aspects of both written and oral communication. Abandoning their initial beliefs, the students recommended in their papers that communication skills take a central place in the engineering curriculum. The action research approach helped students develop not only their academic writing skills, but also their attitudes towards communication courses and, more generally, their understanding of 21 st century engineering.

Academic writing is a very complex process, as it relies on and integrates several actions that already in themselves require a level of expertise, proficiency and higher-order thinking skills (e.g. searching the literature, gathering and analysing data, structuring content, applying intricate sets of (language) rules and (editing) standards etc.). It comes as no surprise, therefore, that many tools and apps have been developed expressly with the purpose of supporting both learners and teachers of academic writing. However, the current offer is so large that the writing practitioner, either learner or teacher, struggles to identify which app or tool is useful at which stage in the complex process that is writingor teaching writing. This paper describes a stocktaking effort that aimed to chart useful apps and tools and map them onto a structured model of the writing process.

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