Using AcaWriter in your teaching
At university we want to teach students how to think — and to make that thinking visible so that others can engage with their ideas. That thinking is often conveyed in writing, making academic writing a critical skill for university level study. Whether graduates pursue academic or other careers, they need to be highly articulate with words. However, most academics are experts in their field, but not in coaching writing, and it is here that AcaWriter has found its niche, providing instant feedback to students to provoke reflection on their drafts, prior to submission.
Students gave a lot of positive feedback around the fact AcaWriter is automated. I think that's an important part of the story because we're saying to students, 'Paste your essay into this tool and then it's going to give you feedback because your lecturer doesn't have enough time to do that for you.
What do we mean by academic writing? Analytical writing focuses on ideas and arguments, and is generally formulated in a formal academic or professional style (such as a journal paper, or business analysis). In contrast, reflective writing focuses on a student’s response to challenging experiences (e.g. from an internship), and is more personal, written in the first-person (using “I” or “my”) like a diary entry. Reflective writing may also include analytical elements (e.g. contrasting one’s experience with a theory, or a case study in the literature).
We've seen an overall improvement in the student's written communication. Students' individual assignment pass-rate is increasing. We're also seeing improvements in the quantity of students who are either meeting, or exceeding, the expectations around written communication.
