How do I cite this?” “The Harvard referencing system? Never heard of it.” “What’s a footnote, again?”

It was clear that my students needed help with academic writing as soon as I started reading the messages that past cohorts had been sending their tutors. This belief was only underlined further when I started directly engaging with my first year group on a BTEC level 3 diploma in pharmaceutical science. The conventions of academic writing were something of a mystery to them.

In fact, I was struck by just how much the students seemed to struggle with several of the key academic and literary elements of the course - from referencing and citations to overall spelling, punctuation and grammar within their essays.

It got me thinking that, while the course was grounded in scientific study, we needed to give the students more chance to develop strong literacy abilities, as this was fundamental to their development as learners.

As I am studying for my postgraduate diploma in education and training while also working as an early career lecturer, it seemed an ideal opportunity to generate an education research project to see if the students’ academic writing could be improved and, if so, how best to do this.

To this end, I established a referencing task that we set within the second week of students’ induction in the 2019 cohort.

The task required students to write a 600-word essay on a subject of their choice within pharmacy and healthcare, but it had to include in-text citations and referencing in line with the Harvard referencing system.

When the students heard about the task, there was some nervousness in the room - shuffling on chairs, eyes gazing down and a general air of apprehension. Rather than deterring me, this only underlined my belief about the need for them to address academic writing head-on and learn about it. Furthermore, I had anticipated that some students might feel like this, so I provided them with a sample essay written by me, as well as links to online resources, including videos, that outlined the conventions they had to follow.

This helped to give them a clear guide and understanding of what was expected and how to achieve it.

The idea was that by getting them to do this early on the course, it would establish the principles for how they are expected to write and the styles and conventions they have to conform to. Previously, this exemplar task was not in place: very little attention was given to academic writing. This meant students were somewhat thrown in at the deep end with assignment work.

The task was not formally assessed in relation to their grades, but they did receive specific feedback on what they wrote and how they had followed the expected conventions or where they had failed to do so. Not only that, but I also gathered data on how they found the task using the Brookfield Lenses criteria (a critical reflection framework) to get them to assess their own response to the task and the guidance it gave. This helped to bring an element of quality assurance to the task to ensure it was delivering benefits to their learning and allowed us to gather feedback and hone the task for the future.

Fifteen students were involved in the study and, based on the data they provided, they all found it beneficial. Five students made further comments on how to improve the referencing task and a further three students completed semi-structured interviews to offer more insights on this. These helped us to further refine the task for next year, which should ensure an even higher level of student engagement and improved long-term benefits.

One student said they wanted a bigger word count to be able to explore topics in more depth, which we are considering; others said they wanted more guidance on what to write about.

While we wanted to give them scope to be able to choose the topic, in the future we are going to offer some topic suggestions, such as a particular drug, a medical condition that interests them or antibiotic resistance.

Furthermore, I also asked some of the other tutors on the course to assess the task and how students responded to it in order to gain their insights. They had been tutors for longer, so would be better able to assess the impact it had on the quality of the writing being submitted.

All four academic tutors said they found the task very useful in improving academic writing standards generally and two of the BTEC course tutors who were in a position to contrast this with previous years’ student assignment work found there were marked improvements in assignment-level work.

It was also noted that setting the task then seeking feedback from students at the start of the course allowed more open dialogue to occur with tutors. While this was not a core intention, it is nonetheless a positive outcome to help students feel settled on the course and build rapport with their tutors.

Given the success of the task, we will be continuing with it and bringing it forward into the first week of students’ induction to ensure that academic writing is one of the first things they learn when embarking on their new learning path.

And, from a professional standpoint, academic writing is an important life skill for students to hone for the work environment - where they could be dealing with medicine-related queries or completing NHS audits. Even if they end up working in another field entirely, the skill will be of use. Indeed, cultivating such skills was recommended by a Further Education Learning Technology Action Group report published in 2012.

Overall, the project proved very interesting and highly rewarding, with the comments from the students particularly noteworthy. One said: “I enjoyed this assignment, because I gained new knowledge on drug addiction; I was introduced to new vocabulary and style of writing.” Another said: “Referencing is fairly new to me so it was nice to be able to practise the skills taught in the induction session at college.”

This certainly underlines the fact that even on courses that are more scientifically orientated, there is reward for focusing on core skills that underpin all learning. This improves students’ ability to produce work that reaches the required standards, both in terms of content and form.

And while I am not one to blow my own trumpet, I was delighted that the write-up of the project for my postgraduate diploma course achieved a score of 82 per cent - with all proper academic conventions adhered to, of course.

Saba Ahmed is a pharmacy lecturer working in a college in the North of England who teaches on a level 3 diploma in pharmaceutical science and BTEC level 4 professional diploma in pharmacy clinical services. She was previously a full-time pharmacist

This article originally appeared in the 6 March 2020 issue under the headline “For reference, this is how I improved academic writing”