Developing students’ academic literacy: an online approach

Abstract

This paper presents an example of a discipline-specific embedded method for developing students’ academic literacy. It discusses the use of an online tool that was created to help Pharmacy students to identify, understand and write the different text genres needed for academic study and professional practice in their discipline. The piloting and evaluation of the online materials showed that the underlying teaching and learning principles were successful in enabling students to construct their own knowledge of the required discourse and writing conventions. Despite these encouraging results, we argue that the online tool can only serve as an introductory method, and additional support is needed for students to become literate in their discipline.