Learning from dyslexic students’ experiences of academic referencing: a more integrated approach to teaching academic literacy skills to first year undergraduate students

Searle, Andrew (2025) Learning from dyslexic students’ experiences of academic referencing: a more integrated approach to teaching academic literacy skills to first year undergraduate students. In: UHMLG Summer Conference. Stop! Collaborate & Listen: Partnerships in Libraries, 12-13th June 2025, University of Worcester. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This presentation reports on both new research into dyslexic students’ experiences of academic referencing, and on how the outcomes of this research have been used to redesign teaching to undergraduate healthcare students.
Academic referencing is a core academic skill, however, from the perspective of a dyslexic student, the complexity involved in creating accurate references is daunting. Furthermore, teaching of referencing skills is often restricted to ‘one-shot’ sessions arranged by lecturing staff and delivered by academic librarians at times that are slotted into general teaching modules.
Qualitative research using semi-structured interviews was undertaken with dyslexic students and the resulting thematic analysis clearly showed a need for a different model of teaching referencing and academic library skills in general. These results were shared with university lecturing staff in Summer 2024, and lecturers from the occupational therapy undergraduate teaching team were keen to apply the findings more broadly to all first-year students. As a result, a sequence of 10 1-hour sessions on a range of academic library skills was planned and delivered during the Autumn term 2024. The results of the qualitative research with dyslexic students will be presented in this session, as well as details of the subsequent teaching programme and data on the impact of these sessions.

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