I’m (not) an academic: get me out of here!

I think we all recognise there is a problem with getting our students to read academic texts. It is something I personally struggle with as young people seem to be increasingly unwilling to engage with books, journal articles and other academic texts. To be honest, I know how they feel, it is hard work trying to parse some of the complex terminologies, getting your head around new concepts. Plus of course, there is a lot of poorly written academic writing out there but that is a different debate that I will put to one side for the moment.

The challenge is clear – how do we get our students reading especially given that if we want students to write well then surely they first need to read well. Isn’t that where they have academic writing modelled for them? I know that was the case for me and when I look back at my attempts to replicate academic writing in my undergraduate essays I can see that working out. I don’t think I cracked it, possibly still haven’t, but it was the reading that taught me how to write.

So if our students are not reading how can we expect them to be able to write well?

Having discussed this a lot with colleagues, one of the teaching team at my place of employment, Paul Stevens, came up with a novel approach to getting the students to read in class. Not only that but he had them reading quite complex journal papers and not only coming to understand the papers but also enjoying the process.

We worked together to try and adapt the in-class activity into a workshop we could deliver for the nascent Solent Active Learning Network Satellite. The results of which you can see in the video below which not only serves as a record of the event but seeks to model the approach to delivering an Active Reading classroom activity.

The workshop models reading as a practice – this is how students will learn to write academically, critically, in-depth, and from an informed viewpoint. It significantly contributes to conquering the fears students have of engaging with what they think of as material too complex for them to comprehend. But, through this group-based, active learning, approach students discover that they can understand, and apply, that which they thought they couldn’t.

Did the activity work?

Why not let us know what you think of the activity and if you have tried it or something similar to this yourself? You can contact us by email via the contact page of this website.

The material here is taken from a workshop delivered by the Solent Active Learning Network Satellite in the Spring of 2020.