Stephen Johnson

This paper reports on an extended orientation program for PhD students, ‘Flying Start’, offered to all early PhD students, both domestic and international, across all disciplines and schools at an Australian University. The aims of the program are to provide additional assistance to candidates to meet the requirements for confirmation of candidature (CoC), as well as helping them to identify additional skills they may need as researchers and to understand some of the broader challenges of doctoral study as a complex ‘rite of passage’ (Kiley, 2009). The program is offered three times a year, each offering consisting of two sets of two-day modules, which students ideally take towards the beginning and towards the end of their first six months. Both modules contain workshop streams related to each of the program aims. ‘Flying Start’ takes a blended learning approach that combines intensive mode teaching (IMT) and the provision of online resources to provide guided introductory and concluding sessions, following which students are able to access resources designed to support independent study and development. A key feature of the program is collaboration between Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners, library and counselling staff, and PhD students, to co-develop and present the workshops streams. The paper argues that by making use of the available resources and by collaborating with other stakeholders, including the students themselves, as well as drawing on their own expertise, ALL practitioners are able to make a significant contribution towards enhancing the transition experience of early PhD students.

This paper reports on an extended orientation program for PhD students, ‘Flying Start’, offered to all early PhD students, both domestic and international, across all disciplines and schools at an Australian University. The aims of the program are to provide additional assistance to candidates to meet the requirements for confirmation of candidature (CoC), as well as helping them to identify additional skills they may need as researchers and to understand some of the broader challenges of doctoral study as a complex ‘rite of passage’ (Kiley, 2009). The program is offered three times a year, each offering consisting of two sets of two-day modules, which students ideally take towards the beginning and towards the end of their first six months. Both modules contain workshop streams related to each of the program aims. ‘Flying Start’ takes a blended learning approach that combines intensive mode teaching (IMT) and the provision of online resources to provide guided introductory and concluding sessions, following which students are able to access resources designed to support independent study and development. A key feature of the program is collaboration between Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners, library and counselling staff, and PhD students, to co-develop and present the workshops streams. The paper argues that by making use of the available resources and by collaborating with other stakeholders, including the students themselves, as well as drawing on their own expertise, ALL practitioners are able to make a significant contribution towards enhancing the transition experience of early PhD students.

This paper discusses collaborations at an Australian university between lecturers from the Centre for University Teaching and Learning (CUTL) and lecturers in the School of Education. These collaborations focus on embedding the teaching and assessment of literacy in the undergraduate teacher education curriculum. The paper describes collaborative practices and outcomes intended to make literacy more explicit in teaching, learning and assessment in two compulsory Education units: a new transitional first year unit and an established foundational second year unit. Central to these collaborations is the strategy of embedding literacy through targeted units – core, compulsory units that mark a major step in students’ progress through the course. The targeted unit approach signals a change in the CUTL focus from working with at-risk students adjacent to their studies, to embedding and integrating academic language and learning (ALL) knowledge and capacities within the curriculum. This strategy reflects the broad shift in ALL practice from adjunct support of some students to an integrated curriculum that benefits all students. The underlying rationale for this practice is the inter-relationship of curriculum content and the skills and capacities required to successfully engage with it. The targeted unit approach focuses on integration with curriculum through a focus on the place and function of core units within courses of study. The implications for collaboration between disciplinary lecturers and ALL practitioners to embed literacy are discussed in terms of literacy in assessment, and a sustainable, targeted approach to the development of literacy across the curriculum.