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Re-evaluating focus, forum and frontiers within the academic writing classroom [PowerPoint presentation]
(2013-06-24) Watson, Danielle
The enforcement of quality assurance stipulations at tertiary institutions has renewed the drive within academia to evaluate, defend, and revise educational practices. Stakeholders from the corporate world, other faculties, and the student body are being invited into "academic domains" to provide feedback on the applicability of courses to their outlined objectives, goals, and purposes. Educators within the area of Academic Writing are given the responsibility of preparing university students to "write" at a standard deemed acceptable and appropriate, with the aim of fulfilling their discipline-specific writing requirements. Despite attempts made by educators, there is a shared sentiment by most stakeholders about students' inability to write. There is the collective recommendation of increasing the writing requirements in Academic Writing courses, matched with issues of students and educators becoming overwhelmed by writing and feedback demands respectively, as well as time and budget constraints. This study seeks to derive an actionable direction for Academic Writing at the tertiary level. It will therefore review course content, teaching strategies and forums, while also examining pedagogical advances in the field, with the primary aim of improving teaching and learning within the Academic Writing classroom