7 November 2019
See below fantastic examples of EAP professionals working collaboratively with colleagues in a range of different roles. Really great projects to help students thrive academically and prepare for meaningful, rewarding futures. Useful insights for the EAP community will be shared over the next few months – shaping the future of EAP. Thank you to @ukcisa from @baleap and @liablajward for helping us set up this innovative funding initiative.
Ruth Brooks (Subject Leader Undergraduate Management), Jo Thomas (International Learning Development Manager) and Sara-Jane Postill (International Learning Development Tutor)
University of Huddersfield Business School
Adopting an integrated approach, this pilot develops an employability spine across the three years of an undergraduate degree. It will allow students to understand their personal starting point and uncover their own motivations to set and pursue their own personal development plan to become employable global professionals in their chosen field. Working collaboratively, academics and EAP staff will construct a framework based on Tomlinson’s (2017) ‘Graduate Capital Model’ that is equally accessible to home/EU and international students to develop their personal employability alongside intercultural effectiveness to become a global professional. The nature of this project means that the findings are transferable to other subject disciplines.
Anna Rolinska (EAP Lecturer), Catriona Doyle (Archives and Collections Assistant) and Bobbie Winter-Burke (Assistant Librarian)
The Glasgow School of Art
The GSA EAP lecturer teams up with the Library and Archives to design and facilitate object- and inquiry-based learning (OBL and IBL) sessions for international students on pre-sessional and foundation courses. The multisensory learning experience offers students a unique opportunity to practise describing and analysing historic objects, through which they can build their confidence, develop communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills, and thus better understand academic requirements of studying in the creative context. The project will evaluate the experience and share its findings, including a reusable OBL-IBL-EAP Toolkit, through a hands-on CPD workshop for EAP practitioners.
Maria Hussain (Faculty International Tutor), Louisa Hill (Professional Development Tutor) and Clare Lether (Student Education Service Assistant)
University of Leeds: Business School + Employability & Opportunity
Leeds University Business School (LUBS) student cohort mix at both Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate (PGT) levels is becoming increasingly international. However, even with such a diverse student population on campus, recent studies (C. Rose-Redwood and R. Rose-Redwood, 2018; Harrison and Peacock, 2010; Leask, 2009) have shown that there are underlying barriers to engagement between both international and home student groups. Research suggests that through greater opportunity for interaction in non-face threatening informal contexts (Harrison and Peacock, 2010) further intercultural communication (ICC) between both student groups may be realised. The proposed project makes available modest funding for a number of student-designed and led small-scale intercultural group projects to address the growing need for ICC development. As ICC has been highlighted as a core competency for the 21st century (Deardorff, 2015), it is hoped that this project will also create further positive impact(s) on developing both graduate attributes and outcomes.
Simon Williams (Tutorial Fellow) and Ruth Bowles (Academic Skills Consultant)
University of Sussex: Sussex Centre for Language Studies + Careers and Employability Centre
Reflective writing is often used in HE student assignments due to its positive effect on developing metacognition (Jarvis et al., 2003). Reflective writing models can provide useful scaffolding but some students still have difficulty moving from description to analysis and goal setting (Cheng, 2017). The project will focus on developing a Mobile App to simplify the process, providing an easy and enjoyable way for students to engage in reflection after lectures or study sessions. Students will be co-creators of the app and a World Café process will be used for input and evaluation.
Caroline Burns, Jane Carnaffan and Guy Middleton (Lecturers, Department of Languages, Northumbria University), Stephanie Bridges (Associate Professor, Clinical Pharmacy Practice, Nottingham University), Jenny O’Neill (Careers Adviser, Northumbria University) and Ellen Cole (Scholarly Publications Librarian, Northumbria University)
Northumbria University + University of Nottingham
The project brings together academics and professional services colleagues from two UK universities to develop teaching and learning resources for Intercultural Communication based on a non-essentialist model of culture (Holliday, 2011). With expertise in healthcare, tourism, cultural studies and EAP, the team will produce materials for use with a range of cohorts, i.e. different disciplines, small/large groups, online/face-to-face, underpinned by a shared theoretical perspective. Following initial teamwork and pilots, we will host a one-day workshop for the wider community to feedback and develop our ideas. An interactive website will be designed to disseminate our materials and collect staff/student feedback.
