Using a virtual learning environment to develop academic writing with first year dance students: facing the challenge of writing through digital images

Abstract

This paper discusses research into the facilitation of academic writing for first year dance students using images, emails and the forum of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Taking place over several weeks in the early part of the academic year and within a core module entitled Personal and Professional Development in the single honours Dance Practice and Performance degree, students were asked to contribute to a series of formative tasks implemented through the University of Wolverhampton ‘s VLE entitled ‘Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework’ (WOLF). Employing an Action Research methodology and working with both Academic Literacies theorising and research into VLEs in literacy learning, early results indicate that writing in a less formal collaborative space provides an important preliminary setting for introducing formal academic writing.

Keywords:

• elearning
• virtual learning environment
• Academic Literacies
• Action Research
• academic writing
• dancers as writers

Notes

1. For a further contextual background to this legislative shift see Ivanič and Lea (2006) and their discussion of the 1992 Education Act and its consequence for the development of HE academic writing provision.

2. Information compiled from HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) and UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admission Service) indicate that of the 35 universities in England offering Honours and Joint Honours Undergraduate degrees in Dance, only four universities are pre 1992 Universities. These are the University of Leeds, the University of Salford, the University of Surrey and the University of Ulster.

3. Very little research has been undertaken to specifically address the academic writing skills of dance students. An exception to this is work by Mitchell and others (2000), who argue that seeing the skill of writing as similar to the skill of choreography aids in facilitating academic writing. Above all they suggest that it is essential that writing support comes from within a student’s own disciplinary area of study.

4. Work in the field of Critical Pedagogy by pioneers such as Giroux (1989) and McLaren (1989) have worked with the notion of emancipation as an important outcome for educational practices. Tripp (1990) brings Action Research into dialogue with Critical Pedagogy to argue for the emancipatory effects of Action Research.

5. See Ramsden (1988) for a discussion of the differences between deep and surface learning.