What is the toolkit?
The Academic Skills Provision Toolkit is designed to be used by college teams with responsibility for planning, managing or delivering academic skills provision.
It will support you to:
- Produce a comprehensive visual map of existing academic skills provision in college, which can be shared for information and further development
- Review and discuss existing provision with a view to identifying gaps and barriers as well as opportunities for enhancement
- Facilitate and structure conversations and action planning with staff and students
- Consider effective allocation of tasks and responsibilities related to academic skills provision
- Explore ideas through examples of good practice from a range of case studies
- Discover further guidance and support for academic skills provision in colleges through the project literature review and Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO).
The toolkit has evolved out of work undertaken with 17 colleges.
It is designed to be dynamic, providing an ongoing opportunity for you to contribute to it by submitting college-based case studies (URL NEEDED), further reading suggestions (URL NEEDED), and suggestions for additional tools (PLEASE CHECK THIS).
We would like to hear from colleges who are looking to work through this toolkit. We can provide support with facilitating workshops and help colleagues identify next steps. Please get in touch at contact@ctl.ox.ac.uk.
What are the toolkit components?
The five toolkit components are interconnected and complementary, rather than sequential, allowing you to engage with whichever components best suit your requirements at any point in time:
There is also an ORLO (Online Reading List Online) to support the toolkit, and a research report based on work by the Centre for Teaching and Learning's 2023 Student Experience Interns.
You can read about each toolkit component below.
The tools will be most effective when college teams collaborate to contribute different academic and professional perspectives and expertise; involving student contributors will further enrich outputs.
A Guide to Academic Skills Provision in Colleges
A Guide to Academic Skills Provision in Colleges is an Oxford Teaching Idea developed by the Centre for Teaching and Learning. It provides ten prompt questions on academic skills provision in Oxford colleges.
The questions were developed from a review of the academic literature and broader scholarship on academic skills development.
You may find these prompts a useful starting point for considering academic skills provision in your college. In reflecting on this guidance, you may find it helpful to consider how academic skills provision may need to be adapted to support an increasingly diverse student body effectively, particularly disadvantaged students who require additional support.
Mapping Tool, Reviewing Tool and Role Profile Tool (CT TO ADD URLS BELOW)
To complement the Guide to Academic Skills Provision in Colleges, there are three tools: the Mapping Tool, the Reviewing Tool and the Role Profile Tool.
The Mapping Tool provides a structured 3-step process to identify, visualise and review current services, resources, processes and activities associated with academic skills provision within colleges. It provides guidance on producing a comprehensive map (paper-based or digital) of what academic skills provision is available, which can be shared with staff and students for information and serve as a basis for further review and enhancement of provision.
The Reviewing Tool offers guidance on how to review, plan and explore academic skills provision within colleges. It facilitates a self-evaluation activity, an enhancement planning workshop and detailed survey planning. This aids colleges in their considerations of how their academic skills provision currently works and how it can be enhanced.
The Role Profile Tool helps to identify, reflect on and enhance the activities and roles associated with academic skills provision within colleges – it aids the considerations of who is responsible for the range of activities associated with academic skills development beyond the work of college subject tutors.
Each tool can be used independently or combined with one or both of the other tools.
College case studies
These case studies are based on Centre for Teaching and Learning consultancies with colleges as part of the Academic Skills Development Project, focusing on review, enhancement or evaluation of existing academic skills provision.
We invite colleagues to contribute other examples of enhancements to and evaluation of academic skills provision in colleges. If you would like to submit a case study, please complete this form. (PLEASE PROVIDE URL)
Student research report
This research report (Proposal for an Academic Skills Hub) is based on the work of the Centre for Teaching and Learning's 2023 Student Experience Interns.
It proposes the creation of an online Academic Skills Hub to help make academic skills provision at the University of Oxford more engaging, accessible, and inclusive. SHOULD WE MENTION HERE THAT THE ACADEMIC SKILLS HUB IS NOW LIVE, AND INCLUDE LINK TO IT?
The Centre for Teaching and Learning's Student Experience Internship Scheme is run as part of the University’s Summer Internship Programme.
Academic Skills Provision ORLO (Oxford Reading Lists Online)
If you would like to find out more about research on academic skills provision, there is an ORLO (Oxford Reading Lists Online) list that provides links to further resources, guidance and literature on academic skills provision.
If there is a resource that you would like to suggest adding to this reading list, please use this form.
