SETU - Why we started the STARS project

We are lecturers at South East Technological University in Ireland. We work in different disciplines - Daire in computing and Niamh in social science - but over the course of many conversations, we realised that our students faced common challenges on their academic journey, especially with regard to the development of academic writing skills. We saw that even if students got very detailed feedback on their work, they often struggled to put it into practice in a consistent or sustained way. We also saw that struggles with writing didn’t stop at undergraduate level, but was something that PhD students grappled with too - a fact that has been widely documented in academic literature.

Over time we came to see that difficulties in implementing feedback was just one part of a wider set of obstacles that were preventing our students from reaching their full potential. We realised that students often had poor planning or time management skills, or they had yet to develop the skills necessary to properly review their own work. They sometimes struggled to manage the emotional aspects of writing. Rather than succumbing to a deficit view of students as being just ‘bad’ writers, we learnt from extensive research evidence that if we could help students build their capacity for self-regulated learning (SRL), some of these obstacles could be overcome. This was the key motivation for initiating the STARS project.

But we also knew from experience that the mere availability of SRL resources is insufficient to help learners or their teachers. This is because finding and adopting SRL strategies in a systematic way can be very time-consuming. What is needed therefore is an accessible digital tool that can be easily integrated into assessment and that is accompanied by appropriate support and capacity building for both students and teachers. By working closely with colleagues and students across the four partner organisations, this is what we hope to achieve in this project.