The FOCUS project A corpus of Durham student writings produced by UG/PG students across an increasingly broad range of disciplines e.g. Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Sociology, History, Sport, Criminology. Contains well over 1 million words and figures. Developing concordancing activities based on this corpus to allow students to discover more about target vocabulary in context and developing academic writing skills. Supported by HEA and Durham University funding. Idea of Nation and the number of different encounters with a word. Corpus project to be used in both subject content modules (e.g. Chemistry) and skills modules (e.g. Academic Practice/EAP). Corpus hits can speed up the “noticing” process by showing word environments and allowing research. Suggestions for technical approaches to this.

Virtual Experiments

Virtual Field Trips

Pre-Arrival Portal

To teach or not to teach: the effectiveness of overtly teaching formulaic phrasing in academic practice Review of literature related to teaching formulaic phrasing as the initial stage of a potential investigation to carry out in Academic Practice sessions; the aim would be to help determine how effective this is as a learning strategy. Background: Use of formulaic phrasing is included in most EAP curricula; also included in many academic writing books. Corpus linguistics is used to identify repetition of words – moving more towards recognition of recurrent word combinations (focus on frequency and distribution) Generally believed to support purposeful, logical writing in all disciplines, and to help to make academic reading more accessible. Often good results gained from teaching how to incorporate signal phrases during academic speaking tasks. Some challenges: Selecting model texts for teaching – narrow range of lexical bundles, so ‘chance encounters’ not always reliable. Selection of most useful (or learnable) phrases to teach/highlight not always straightforward. Context issues, and often problems with integration of phrases in own writing. Lack of ‘face validity’ – seen as ‘remedial’ learning. ‘There is little advice based on solid research on the most useful pedagogical approach to lexical bundles and phrases’ (Coxhead, 2008) – suggests that further research from investigating our students’ learning could be useful.

Motivation, Resilience and Self-efficacy and their Contribution to Chinese International Foundation Students’ Academic Adjustment Ongoing investigation into factors affecting Chinese students’ academic adjustment over the past 5 years on our Foundation Programme at both QC and DC Findings indicate that: only intrinsic motivation contributes to academic success all three factors investigated have a positive effect on academic adjustment it seems that they are not internally correlated Current status: Data from 2016 supports findings This year we intend to include qualitative data from focus groups

Conscientiousness Index and Success Project investigating the factors which affect success in Foundation students found that the only strong input associated with consistent success was the Conscientiousness Index, a measure of a student’s compliance with University process, e.g. attendance, timely submission of work etc.. Potential Applications: Formative Used for feedback to student To identify students who need greater support for retention and success Summative Used to determine progression. Can identify outliers and major changes. Can be used to explore ‘failure to remediate’ Informative if the data is retained and cohort study conducted might be used to inform organisation of potential issues which may occur in the future

Telling tales: supporting students to develop a literary voice and independent research skills through the reworking of fairy tale The use of traditional fairy tales in an English Literature module to engage students and to encourage them to develop effective, critical research skills. FC classes are very diverse, including mature and young students from a range of different backgrounds in the UK and overseas. Some commonly recognised fairy tales are reviewed and their origins traced back; different versions are compared and theorists identified and discussed. Students then select a fairy tale of their own choice to research; they then rework the tale to create an oral re-telling which changes our perception of the tale in some way. The assessment includes a commentary that explains the process of research and story development, and also a short reflection. The association of childhood stories with academic research creates an accessible yet effective summative task that is particularly appropriate to this diverse student body.

Wellness & Resilience as Academic Skills Recognition that increasing numbers of students are coming to university with a MH issue; stress and anxiety in high-pressure situation may exacerbate Approximately one in ten Durham students will approach Counselling Service; NUS survey: over half of students with mental health issue will not ask for any help at all Societal concern: at least 1 in 4 people will encounter a mental health difficulty at some point in their lives (directly or indirectly) Teach wellness and resilience explicitly in the same way that essay writing or library skills are taught in order to help students to cope

Virtual Calculator Project A selection of instructions, videos and interactive activities with a virtual calculator for newly arriving students.

Developing online formative assessment to improve mature student mathematical competence Achievement: 1. More than 100 questions for Core Foundation Maths have been developed in summer 2015. 2. They were used by the students between October and December 2015 via DUO. 3. The evaluation shows that this resource has been very useful for the students who used it, as is attested by the fact that they have achieved 10 marks higher in the tests on average than those who did not. 4. Students’ personal experience of using the resource has been investigated which was fed back to the teacher for further improvement . The project is disseminated at CETL-MSOR conference 2016 “Does online assessment encourage surface learning?”

Supporting Transition Through Peer Mentoring Achievement : 38 mentors have been recruited in 2015 and 2016 which shows healthy development of the project. Foundation centre Peer Mentoring web page has been developed. (add in lin (http://community.dur.ac.uk/foundation.mentoring) More than 70 students applied to have a mentor in Foundation year 2015, about 40 students were allocated a mentor, the rest of the students were in control group. Mentees’ Self Efficacy is significantly improved comparing with those are not. The project is disseminated at Teaching Follow Network Conference, (Durham) , 2015 Durham University Inaugural Learning and Learning and Teaching Conference, 2016

Developing online subject specific learning resources for maths Achievement: Four summer students were employed to developed online resources. Pre-arrival packages are developed and for Earth Science (module: Mathematics for Geosciences) Business School (module: Quantitative Method) Foundation Centre ( Module: Core Foundation Maths) These packages have been sent out to the students 2016-17.