LD@3 The end of generic academic support? Experience sharing of two cross-course workshops at a London-based institution

Learning development provision in higher education tends to either ‘bolt-on’ (standalone, generic, or non-integrated, extracurricular) or ‘built-in’ (embedded or integrated) (Bennett et al., 2000), with the latter being recently promoted and widely implemented in UK universities. This is no exception to Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, where the ‘academic support’ sessions are predominantly embedded, timetabled and customised for individual cohorts, i.e., in line with the embedded model. With the aim to develop students’ academic literacy and learning skills through fun and interactive workshops beyond a traditional classroom, the Academic Support team at Camberwell have also provided occasional cross-course workshops open to all students. In this LD@3, we would like to share the experiences of developing and delivering two such workshops – Robert’s session ‘Conceiving arts and design research’ with a visit to the Sceaux Gardens Estate next to the campus in June 2022; James’ session ‘Creative problem solving’ at the college’s indoor open space, the Learning Zone, in November 2022. We will present and reflect on the motivation, planning, delivery, and challenge of our workshops respectively. We will also discuss with the audience about the prospect or potential of extracurricular academic support provision.

Bennett, N, Dunne, E., & Carré, C. (2000) Skills development in higher education and employment. Open University Press and The Society for Research in Higher Education.