Louise Powell-Cook

It is evident in teaching the law modules on a BSc in Forensic Science programme that many science students, while talented at scientific reasoning and numeracy, are more challenged in developing the same level of skill in their language and literacy.

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To try to address this and avoid these students being disadvantaged in their academic performance and subsequent employability, a peer assisted learning scheme has been piloted, as a part of a teaching fellowship sabbatical in the second semester of this academic year.

The scheme introduced level 6 journalism students into the level 5 forensic science classroom to mentor the forensic science students in student co-created writing workshops.

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The delivery of the workshops has taken place within an existing core module, has been linked with a new assessment and supported by talks from potential employers, alongside sessions from the university’s in-house employability team. The aim of these has been to highlight the need for the development of good communication skills in achieving success in the graduate recruitment process (and so encourage student engagement.)

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The efficacy of the scheme has been measured to date, by student evaluation questionnaires and informal feedback, but in due course, will be evaluated by module performance, degree classification and graduate outcomes.