Innovations, activities and principles for supporting students\u27 writing

Despite some of the critiques of the conventions of academic writing that have been outlined above, it is also clear that nurturing good writing skills among students enhances their ability to think in complex and coherent ways (Bean, 2001). Writing is not only valued in academia; good writing skil ls are important for the enhancement of our students\u27 professional lives. Despite its centrality in academia and professional life, it is often left up to the students themselves to become good at writing. While there have been notable changes in the UK and Ireland in providing dedicated support for student writing, many higher education contexts rely on students being acculturated or somehow induced into academic writing simply by being immersed into university life (Lea and Street, 1998)

Structured professional development for academic developers: A collaborative approach

This paper shares the experience of a group of academic developers’ engagement in collaboratively working towards the completion of an online open-access professional development (PD) course designed to support higher education teachers to engage with a new professional development framework. Committee members of the Educational Developers in Ireland Network set out to complete the course as a demonstration of their commitment to their own PD and to experience the process with a view to becoming facilitators of the course. An auto-ethnographic approach was used to capture this experience, and findings demonstrate an inspiring alternative to PD that supports academic developers in the quest to legitimise and prioritise their own PD in the context of highly pressurised roles