Examining engagement with an online toolkit for academic writing in blended-learning initial teacher education programmes

The Academic Writing Toolkit was developed by Hibernia College in 2017 in response to feedback from both faculty and students of the College's Primary and Post-Primary ITE masters programmes. This feedback indicated a need for guidance and instruction on academic writing that was both student-teacher focused and distance-learner focused. Designed for asynchronous online delivery, the Toolkit covers standard academic writing skills such as referencing, grammar, formatting and style. It also provides tailored guidance on reflective writing, assessment writing and dissertation writing from teacher education experts. Such writing practices form a crucial component of teacher formation by fostering skills in reflective practice and critical thinking (Day, 1999; Whitehead, 2000) as well as supporting the development of teacher self-identity as practitioner researchers (Stenhouse, 1975; Argyris & Schön, 1976). This paper summarises the theory and principles guiding the Toolkit's design and draws on a study of quantitative and qualitative data to obtain insight into students' usage patterns and their experience of the Toolkit. The study focused on Primary and Post-primary programme cohorts (n=315) and used data derived from a combination of user logs, online surveys (n=52) and student records. Ethical approval for this research was obtained from the College's Research Ethics Committee. Among the findings from the study were strong preferences expressed by students for instructional modalities that enhance the sense of teaching presence in online content (Garrison et al., 2000) and a scheduling approach that recognises the patterns and workload of distance-learning students.