Student Research and Writing Advisory Tutorials: a multi-faculty TD Project

Project Title

Student Research and Writing Advisory Tutorials: a multi-faculty TD Project

Project Leader

Prof Barry Sautman and Prof James Lee

School / Dept

SHSS / SOSC, HSS

Project Duration

Sep 2015 - Aug 2016

Project Description

The project proposes to address the following learners' needs:

• Undergraduate students taking HSS courses need to develop their research skills systematically through a step by step approach. Hence, we are devising a “think and write” tutorial series to enhance students’ ability to conduct small-scale independent research; in parallel, we have  improved our awareness of the learning needs of  students through a time-lapsed assessment of the extent to which they can achieve this particular Intended Learning Outcome (ILO);
• Undergraduate students taking HSS courses need to gradually equip themselves with stronger professional writing ability in order to attain a decisive advantage in their future employment and postgraduate study; however, few instructors in HUMA and SOSC can afford to use more than one class meeting to teach students how to write, even though most HSS courses share the ILO on strengthening students’ writing communication skills. To that end, our project can well provide the content-instruction of HSS undergraduate courses through  assistance to students in analytic writing;
• Undergraduate students working with HSS faculty as junior Research Assistants (RA) need to demonstrate basic research skills in order to carry out their tasks well. The proposed project can also help them get up to speed on research skills.

Project Outcome

• 8 SHSS courses have joined the project with in total 23 tutorial sessions launched to the students covering 423 participants with increasing number of e-learning resouces.
• Newly launched research and writing tutorial workshops exactly for RPG TAs with 5 faculties joining as the guest speakers for the aim of training TAs better coach UG students on academic writings.
• Optimized resource efficiency by integrating the resources of RWAT teams, CEI and library to provide tutorial support.
• Developed a bunch of e-learning resources on research and writing in HSS undergraduate courses for students, faculty and HSS TAs in order to make the project as a long-term sustainable one.

Status

Completed

Project Documents
(Only accessible by HKUST users)

• Project Plan

Adaptation

Full Project