Case studies archive
Supporting Non-traditional Students Preparing the Final Year Undergraduate Project in BA English Language Studies
Summary | Background / Context | Activities / Practice | Conclusions | Bibliographical References
Authors
Marion Colledge and Stephen Jones
London Metropolitan University
Added to site
December 2010
Summary
Following a student survey, a number of changes were made to the running of the final year project in English Language: . The work behind this case study was partially funded by the WriteNow Centre for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Background / Context
Producing a long ‘Dissertation’ (or ‘Project’ as a Third Year Undergraduate independent piece of work is often called) is likely to be the most challenging task that Undergraduates will have faced. Such a module provides them with the opportunity to work on an extended task which they design themselves in conjunction with tutors. Single Honours students often have to write a Project of around 10,000 words or more, to be completed over their entire final year which occupies an important place in determining the students’ Honours classification.
Among the ‘new’ universities ours is not alone in having a large number of students from ‘priority postcode’ areas, and diverse linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Additionally, up to 20% of our students have some level of dyslexia or dyspraxia. By the time they arrive at their third year, existing students have researched book-based literature to complete a range of 2000 word long, referenced, critical writing tasks, and some independently chosen text analyses. However, we work against a background of significant fluidity in the student body. To illustrate, approximately 10% of the students in the third Year BA ELS have transferred from some European-based universities. Some, by no means all, of these students have apparently been less exposed to a critical approach than our own students despite the credit transfer system of the Bologna agreement (2005).
When we assumed responsibility for the English Language Studies Project Module, there were six hours of front-loaded class tuition. This covered an introduction to the Project and choice of topic, an introduction to research methods, and a workshop with the Subject Librarian on literature search. After this very short introduction students were required to submit a Project Proposal Form. Thereafter, the tuition was individual: ten 30 minute sessions of tutorial support spread across two semesters, the onus being on students to make tutorial appointments. Most students were writing review-based Projects. We found that in order to achieve the required length of text (9,000 words), many students, rather than using more sources, were summarising a few book sources at greater length than they had done in their essays, making for rather weak results. Weaker students would often write about each book or article chronologically, leading to considerable overlap in reporting ideas. We wanted to find ways to enable students to build up their confidence to read more critically and also to produce some independent research, so we set up a Project where students would have to do some primary research.
Student survey
We had the opportunity from the academic year 2008-9 to carry out a small piece of action research on the Project module, which coincided with departmental changes to all Project modules. We analysed a selection of Projects. Then we issued pre- and post- module questionnaires to students with a mixture of quantitative and qualitative items regarding the Project experience. These were delivered to two small cohorts of students (50 students). A volunteer was also sought to write a log about her experiences during the Project module. Fortunately, we had 100% response to the post-Project questionnaire delivered to the first cohort of students.
The information we gleaned was as follows: before the Project very few students indeed had any prior experience of doing any research. Most students experienced extremely positive feelings about undertaking an individual Project. Despite this, about half the students reported negative feelings such as ‘uncertainty’, ‘confusion’ or ‘anxiety’, particularly with regard to choosing and defining their Project area, hardly a desirable situation.
After the Project students stated that the most useful aspect of tuition was the relationship with the tutor.
Based on our knowledge and on the projects we analysed, the principal demands and weaknesses of the Project module seemed to us to be fourfold, centring on:
- Time and self-management
- Project topic choice
- Structure of the Project
- Criticality
Among the diverse student responses to the post-Project questionnaire there was also a cluster of responses highlighting the first three of the aspects above.
Perhaps our greatest concern was time management: keeping up the momentum. Some students, after planning their Proposal around Week 4 of the first Project semester, abandoned reading for their Project in order to work on taught modules with pressing deadlines, resuming work on their Projects only late in the second semester of the module. A few students failed to make much progress with their reading at all. Dyslexic students were particularly at risk as is shown in the case of Student T. Her intention was to write about the language of Trinidadian lyrics. Unfortunately she did not recognise the link with readings from previous modules on style and sociolinguistics and could not compile her reading list. Although generally confident in approaching tutors, T did not consult us between week 3 and week 10 of this module, but went to her friends who persuaded her to focus on musical style rather than language analysis, as the following extract from her log shows:
Week 4
My friends suggest that I should try E-mailing some DJs and getting their views on what I am writing about. I email Martin Jay, who recommends I read a book by an artist called Chalkdust. I start to feel a bit more hopeful.
Week 7
I am looking on the internet for inspiration on a new topic.
So she was no further forward. This example is not as extreme as it may seem.
In their post-module questionnaire students made suggestions, including viewing more sample Projects than those to which they then had access. This fitted in with our leaning towards the 'genre approach' advocated by Swales and Feak (2000; 2004) and Paltridge (2000). They also strongly suggested that they wanted us to apply more pressure on them to produce their draft work during the course of the module.
Activities / Practice
The following changes were made at various moments in the teaching cycle:
Project type and choice of topic
We encouraged students to move away from a format based principally on evaluating secondary sources and suggested they undertake a piece of primary research, such as a survey, case study or text analysis, backed up of course by a literature review. We had seen this type of Project run very successfully on a former Open University undergraduate module (E300 – The English Language) for many years. We asked students to break down their Projects into clear broad sections consisting of: introduction, purpose and scope of own investigation, a short literature review, methodology (including ethics where applicable), methods of analysis, report on findings, conclusion and self-evaluation, bibliography and where applicable appendices.
This allowed students to blossom. To illustrate, a Polish-born student first briefly reviewed both ESOL teaching to young children and Polish immigration, then wrote a brief observational study of the language utterances and behaviour of a Polish-speaking child learning English in a London primary school. Theory was related to students’ own lives and thus we believe we were facilitating more of a ‘deep learning approach’ in the sense of Marton, Hounsel and Entwistle (1984).
Even so, considerable guidance in narrowing down students’ Project topics was necessary. We therefore frontloaded teaching time from six to ten hours of workshops at the beginning of the module to allow more refining of Project topics and initial assistance with reading lists, reducing later individual tutorial time. The timetable of support workshops is below:
Week 1
1. What is a Project? Balance between a critical report on reading and primary research.
2. Meeting a student who is half way through their Project in order to draw on their experience.
Week 2
Research Methods - drawing on links to studies met in 2nd Year Sociolinguistics module, or on any customer questionnaires which students might have completed at some point in their lives.
Week 3
1. Consideration of previous Projects – looking at them from the genre approach.
2. Students work together to give an initial list of three possible topics which interest them and suitable methods for studying each - other students consider how realistic any of these are.
Week 4
1. Revision of critical reading skills – with relevant texts
2. Building up a reading list and learning how to use search engines via the library website – workshop with the librarian.
Week 5
Presenting to peers a proposal and some reading done during the last two weeks.
Week 11
Group session: students to compare progress in their reading and writing up of the literature review, progress their methodology for their practical investigation working in groups with common interests.
Week 8 of second semester
Session on editing
Use of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) within the module
In order to address the students’ sense of confusion we tried to make information much more accessible. For some students their first point of contact with the module is the module handbook in the VLE. Drawing on our knowledge of learning styles theory (Fry, Ketteridge & Marshall, 2008) we tried to cater to a greater extent for students with visual learning styles. We reduced the verbal length of the handbook and made more diagrammatic illustration such as a diagrammatic illustration of the narrowing down of areas of investigation according to four parameters: background thinking (sociolinguistic/psycholinguistic etc), geographic space under consideration, period of time to be considered, group of people to be studied. We also provided a basic alphabetic glossary of research-related vocabulary which was just as useful for our native speakers as for our EU and International students.
A course of action, based on the genre approach, was to make available several abridged Undergraduate Projects in PDF format with sections labelled and marginal comments. It was important to us that these Projects be as different from each other as possible to avoid the risk of students thinking that there is only one way of writing a Project.
We began to handle tutorial advice by email when circumstances such as family illness meant students could not attend face to face and to contact students whom we had not seen for a while. One student stated that for her this was the most important aspect of our teaching.
Collaborative work
Some of the extra class workshop time was used so that groups of students could collaborate on refining their titles and specifying suitable methods of research. Peers were remarkably realistic in spotting unachievable ‘dream projects’ such as one involving physically interviewing students in Nigeria. It was an effective way of trimming topics and titles down to manageable amounts without damping students’ enthusiasm. More recently we have encouraged students to form small groups around common interests, in this way offering opportunities for collaboration, as recommended in the English Benchmarks (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. 20072007) and the Bologna ‘tuning’ document (European Union, 2005).
Time and Self-Management
One way of tackling the time management challenge was to use a technique more used in study skills sessions with first years than third years: we issued our students with a calendar of suggested ‘milestones’ against which they could map their progress, showing how the final three weeks of time for the two semester-long 9,000 word long Project ideally needed to be available for editing and proofreading. On their Project Proposal forms students were asked to set provisional dates for completion of each item of their proposed reading, their writing and their steps in their practical research. We also marked in the diagram we issued a continuing search throughout the Project period for literature and eventual modification of reading.
When the tutorials began, students and tutor jointly made a pro forma record of progress, items discussed and short and mid-term targets agreed at the end of each tutorial, which was then emailed to the student.
Freedom and self-management are all very well, but similar experiences to those of Student T above led us to proactively contact students deemed as high risk who did not appear for tutorials. Student evaluation of this aspect was very positive. One self-doubting student was particularly grateful:
'Had it not been for my tutor’s constant reminder that I could do the Project and the fact that he kept me on track, I would not have made the effort to even show it to him. It’s sad that some people are too embarrassed to show their work for fear that it may be too inferior compared to other people’s.'
Refining Reading Lists
The extra teaching session held in the fifth week of the module gave students the opportunity to report how successful some of their searches had been. Students with topics where there was apparently less material available were then encouraged to make an individual appointment with the librarian in order to expand their reading lists.
The literature review
Although there is no compulsion to review the literature within a single section of the Project (it could be spread out in chapters of findings), the ‘single section structure’ is a safe way for the novice to handle it (Swales and Feak, 2000). Our Project literature review, although now only around 4,000 words in length, was for most students still the most difficult aspect of writing the Project.
It is, therefore on the literature review that we chose to focus much of our attention. The advice manuals then available seemed to concentrate upon types of enquiry, research methods, and keeping and organising records. For example, Judith Bell’s book ‘Doing Your Research Project’ (2005) which then served as our students’ manual, states that a literature review should provide the reader with a brief idea of current knowledge and major themes within the subject area of the research. Students are advised to find categories within the research literature and to note them (2005)(Bell, 2005, p. 21). This is of little help to those with various different sub-topics who are having trouble sorting them out. For one student writing about the attitudes of British migrants in Spain to Spanish, this meant sorting out statistical data about British migration, sociological issues and linguistic issues.
The ‘architecture' of a literature review will depend on the ideas which the student groups together (2005) (Swales and Feak, 2000: 118-124). Both John Swales and Christine Feak (ibid), and (2005) Chris Hart (1995), though writing for Postgraduate students outside our subject area, provide the helpful suggestion of giving students practice sets of article abstracts to discuss their potential arrangement into clusters, which is a procedure we successfully tried.
We also played ‘puzzle games’ by showing students excerpts of Projects and asking them to give both linguistic and content-based evidence to deduce what section of a Project they stemmed from. Finally groups of students were provided with the opportunity to order sections of a sample literature review, giving reasons for their choice, and comparing their solution with the original.
Reading and Criticality
Students were given brief exercises in critical reading (following on from those covered in the First Year of the Degree), involving them in criticising and synthesising sources. They were invited to consider the discipline, period and school from which writers stemmed, and what evidence the authors gave.
It was useful to point out to students how methods of citation show one’s attitude to the text read and how much citation might be appropriate. Ken Hyland (2004) observes that citation and evaluation of previous experts of the field occupies more space in research articles in the Humanities and Social Sciences, including Applied Linguistics, than in hard Sciences and we felt this was valuable knowledge for many of our students. Conversely, students who joined us from Law Degrees had to be warned against using too many direct quotations.
Hyland (2000) also provides an account of ways of citing (direct and indirect; critical and neutral) including the verbs most commonly applied in Applied Linguistics and Sociology, the two epistemological areas in his list most closely allied with English Language Studies. This was the kind of knowledge which we could apply with our students at the editing stage of the Project.
Conclusions
The first year we tried these changes Project grades of weak students in particular improved, and a higher proportion of students gained A’s. However, results may vary annually and will depend on many factors, including the commitment of members of a cohort of students.
Nearly all students liked the option of choosing a practical Project with some primary research. Most benefited from overt consideration of Project structures – and experienced reduced levels of anxiety, after our focus on the demystification of the structure and purpose of Projects. Students with disabilities and diverse learning styles were better catered for, but several of them would ideally still have greater support. There was high student use of electronic communication as a tutorial resource, and of documents on our VLE. The calendar provided has been ranked a popular innovation, but approximately a third of students still worked ‘last minute’ such that their final editing and proofreading still left something to be desired.
Not all students would need such detailed guidance as that we provided, but it is our contention that very many students could benefit from these procedures, and that there are benefits for tutors too in not having to repeat the same information over and over again in tutorials!
Bibliographical References
Bell, Judith. 2005. Doing your research project: A Guide for first-time researchers in education, health and social science, 4th edn. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education.
Burgess, Cathy. 2007. Managing Undergraduate Projects. Higher Education Academy Hospitality, Leisure Tourism Subject Centre. Accessed 25.10.09
Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison. 2000. Research methods in Education; 5th edn. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Cullen, Sarah. 2008. Dissertation supervision: Enhancing the experience of tourism and hospitality students.Hospitality, Leisure Tourism Subject Centre, Higher Education Academy; accessed 25.12.09.
European Union ENQA. 2005. Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education area; accessed 7.1.10.
Fry, Heather, Steve, Kettridge and Stephanie, Marshall. 2008. A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: Enhancing academic practice, 3rd edition.London: Routledge
Greetham, Bryan. 2009 How to write your Undergraduate Dissertation. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Hart, Chris. 1998. Doing a literature review: releasing the Social Science research imagination. London: Sage
Hyland, Ken. 2004. Disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Hyland, Ken. 2000. English for Academic Purposes; an advanced resource book. London: Routledge
Lea, Mary and Brian Street. 1999. Writing as academic literacies; understanding textual practices in higher education. In eds. Christopher Candlin and R. Hyland. Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices. London: Longman, 62-81
Lea, Mary and Brian, Street. 1998. Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach, In Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157-172.
Marton, Ference, Dai, Hounsell and Noel, Entwistle. 1984. The experience of learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press
Norton, Lin. 2009. A practical guide to research in higher education. London: Taylor and Francis
Paltridge, Brian. 2002. Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice. English for Specific Purposes 21: 125-143
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. 2007. English benchmarks. Mansfield: Quality Assurance Agency
Robson, Colin. 2007. How to do a research project: A guide for undergraduate students. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Sanderson, Peter, Clewes, Debbie and Hand Len (1998) Action learning with Business School undergraduates: three tutors use learning sets for project support. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher education 23 (1) 23(1), 33-42
Swales, John, M. 2004. Research genres. Cambridge: CUP
Swales, John, M. and Christine B. Feak. 2000. English in today’s research world: A writing guide. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Swales, John, M. Christine B. Feak. 2004. Academic writing for graduate students. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Walliman, Nicholas. 2004. Your Undergraduate Dissertation: the essential guide to success. London: Sage
Webster, Frank, David Pepper and Alan Jenkins. 2000. Assessing the Undergraduate Dissertation. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 25 (1) 71-80
Woolhouse, Marian. 2002. Supervising Dissertation Projects – Expectations of supervisor and student. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 39 (2) 37-144
