Working with university students who struggle to write in an academic style, prompted me to unpick the specific difficulties they experience, and to design materials to help. I utilised conceptual approaches like games and gamification, visual metaphor representations, colour coding, text simplification and text scaffolding to put together a tool-kit to use in a variety of theme-based tasks.
An example from the toolkit focuses on the skill of theme analysis, a prerequisite for making sense of academic literature but one that students often find difficult to acquire and apply. Using the very popular Grand Theft Auto as the student-related ’hook’, I devised a competitive game around the GTA characters and situations. This ‘playful’ activity was a stepping stone…and it gave students the confidence to transition to the analysis of more complex academic material. Entitled ‘Theme Challenge’, the material was disseminated widely in professional development sessions with staff so that it could be used across different subject areas and departments.
“I and many colleagues were blown away by Stewart’s innovative teaching approach so I invited him to give a workshop to the postgraduate students on my Research Methods module. Most of the students were international and had difficulties in critical writing. The students responded very positively to the activities and all took part in the Grand Theft Auto theme challenge and other games. Several students mentioned in module evaluations that Stewart’s workshop on critical writing was one of highlights of the module. The students and I have been inspired by Stewart’s innovations in teaching and learning.” (Dr Dora Chan, Sheffield Business School).