Sponsor/year: Student Academic and Peer Support, 2016 – 17.

Project leads: Drew Roberts, Caroline Wright-Neville, Lyn Doolan and Nara Tsedendamba.

Aim: To better support students unfamiliar with university culture, and especially to support their work on assessments.

Underpinning theories/literature:

• Transition pedagogy: article defining a pedagogy for teaching diverse commencing students.
• Effective teaching and support of students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds: practical advice for teaching staff (PDF 1.1MB): recommendations from research for staff teaching low socioeconomic status (LSES) students.

Experienced Deakin Language and Learning Advisers designed and developed the resources, drawing on their own extensive experience of what students need to know, as well as:

• an audit of all existing Deakin student support materials
• current best practice in web design
• literature in what students transitioning into university need
• consultations and feedback from student mentors and Deakin academics
• usability testing.

• Deakin-relevant content: Assessment types and examples are gathered from Deakin staff and students, so are as relevant as they can be to Deakin students. Also, the pages have been piloted with Deakin staff and students to ensure they are current and clear.
• Easy to find: The resources are easy to access online and designed so that users only need bookmark one page for all their academic skills information. Some include downloadable PDFs for use offline and where no Internet is available.
• Accessible: Attractive and accessible web design, including transcripts and captions for videos, approved fonts, colours, etc.
• Easy to embed: Links to the pages are easy to embed in assignment instructions and CloudDeakin unit sites, and Study Support staff recommended doing so to give students quick access to models, explanations and tips for the specific type of assignment they have been given. Study Support can also tailor content by request from unit chairs.
• Positive, friendly tone: Videos feature friendly yet serious tips from Deakin student mentors, modelling a confident and positive approach to study with which students can readily identify.
• Intuitive navigation: Navigation is student-centred, simple and consistent across the suite, with tabs to toggle between subjects rather than long pages to scroll through. This makes it easy for students to find what they need as quickly as possible.
• Simple language: The resources use language that takes into account language abilities of different student cohorts, including international or local students with English as an additional language (EAL), LSES students, mature-age students, cloud students and students with accessibility requirements.

• Page views: 105, 901 page views for all Academic Skills pages during Trimester 1, 2017—an increase by 35% on views of the previous version of these pages in Trimester 1, 2016 (internal report).
• Used in student advice: Since mid-July 2017, Language and Learning Advisers and Writing Mentors have been regularly referring students to the resources in consultations/workshops. Themes in their comments were that the resources are effective, easily understood, well-designed, appropriate in content, and that students find them very helpful (internal report).
• Used by teachers: Increasing numbers of Deakin teachers are embedding links to the relevant Academic Skills pages in their CloudDeakin unit sites and assessment instructions. Some are saying they have learnt how to format their assessment tasks better from reading these resources (interview). In collaboration with unit staff, Study Support also adapt and expand upon the guides to support unit work more specifically.