Pixel International Conferences

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.To try to address this and avoid these students being disadvantaged in their academic performance and subsequent employability, a peer assisted learning scheme was piloted, as a part of a teaching fellowship sabbatical.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.The delivery of the workshops took place within an existing core module, that of Research Methods and was linked with a new assessment. This was supported by talks from potential employers, alongside sessions from the university’s in-house employability team. The aim of these was to highlight the need for the development of good communication skills in achieving success in the graduate recruitment process (and so promote student engagement) The efficacy of the scheme has been measured to date, by student evaluation questionnaires. In due course, it will be able to be measured by level 6 module performance, degree classifications and graduate outcomes. Early feedback suggests some positive trends.