Composition Forum 45, Fall 2020
http://compositionforum.com/issue/45/

The University of Limerick’s Writing Centre’s Emergence from a Knowledge Economy: An Interview with Íde O’Sullivan

Rachel Riedner

Abstract: In this interview, Rachel Riedner and Íde O’Sullivan discuss the context in Ireland that has motivated a shift to US process-based curricular and the emergence of Irish writing centers that incorporate both American-style WAC and WID elements. In doing so, Riedner and O’Sullivan make clear that such changes are the work and expertise of the dedicated faulty at the University of Limerick as well as a series of entangled, contemporaneous discourses: the desired qualifications for employment posted by private corporations; a nationally funded series of curricula reforms designed to improve the Irish economy, employment rate, and profile within the globalized economy; the students’ respective desires for employment after graduation; and a cultural expectation that a degree automatically prepares students for the job market.

Background

In May of 2015, I was invited to spend a month in the Republic of Ireland working with faculty (called staff) to develop disciplinary based writing curriculum. During my visit, it became clear to me that Irish colleagues were looking to the US for curricular guidance as they considered how to integrate writing into undergraduate education. This visit and subsequent visits raised questions about how and why higher education in Ireland is interested in academic writing, and why Irish colleagues are looking to US process-based curricular models.

To consider these questions more deeply, in May of 2019, I had an extensive conversation with Íde O’Sullivan, one of the founders of the Republic of Ireland’s first Writing Centre at the University of Limerick (UL). My interest is in the local history of writing centres in Ireland (note the Irish spelling) as well as the national contexts in which they emerged and are expanding to incorporate features of WID and WAC programs. Created in 2007 with national funding, O’Sullivan recounts how UL’s Writing Centre responded to a need to create consistency in writing instruction and to provide student support with the writing process. Much of our conversation focuses on how O’Sullivan and her colleagues navigated institutional structures and initiatives coming from national forums, working with colleagues and administrators to embed the Writing Centre in institutional culture, and, more recently, working with colleagues to integrate writing into their teaching. O’Sullivan and others guided UL staff towards a focus on teaching and learning which broadened the student experience beyond deep disciplinary study.

The conversation provides a short history and portrait of writing curriculum in Ireland where O’Sullivan and her colleagues integrated writing into their local institutional culture and curriculum in the context of national and global contexts. The Irish education system has traditionally had a focus on summative assessment, which has encouraged rote learning in secondary education and focused, deep disciplinary study in higher education but is shifting away from this model. As O’Sullivan explains, a broadening of the higher education curriculum is linked to Ireland’s national political economic aims to prepare students for employment in their globalizing economy. As the conversation reveals, broadening the curriculum is one means through which Ireland is shifting its higher education system to produce graduate attributes that align with new European markets.

Rachel Riedner (RR): Let’s talk about the history of the University of Limerick’s (UL) Writing Centre, starting chronologically and moving forward.

Íde O’Sullivan (ÍO’S): The Writing Centre opened its doors formally in April 2007. Prior to that, there had been some work on writing going on at UL. In 2005, my PhD supervisor, along with colleagues in Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, and other areas were hearing a lot of discussion about writing, and how UL prepares students for future employment. Ireland was in a knowledge economy at the time, and there was a huge concern around preparing our students for this economy. There was an internal kind of drive to do something with our curriculum.

At UL, our efforts started with informal writing workshops to help students with final year projects. All of our students do a final year project, and many of them are confronted with writing they’ve never had to do before. Parallel to those workshops, there were more serious conversations starting, and an internal, interdisciplinary working-group, comprised mainly of interested faculty, was formed, namely the University of Limerick Research Group on Writing. This group got some seed money to bring in an expert to help drive the conversation, Jim Henry from George Mason University. Jim came in for a week, and in that week, a lot of faculty and interested parties told Jim about their concerns and shared ideas. The outcome was a collaboratively written proposal for a writing center. That proposal was granted Strategic Innovation Funding (SIF) from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) SIF cycle 1 programme. A good portion of the Strategic Innovation Funding was allocated to teaching and learning projects. Ireland was in better times still at that stage. This national funding was for regional effort, and institutions that applied in a cluster were more successful. Therefore, the SIF application sought funding for a regional writing centre.

Our project was led by Professor Sarah Moore who was the Dean for Teaching and Learning at that time. I was involved in implementing a survey with faculty and students, and we received huge interest. Those questionnaires helped us figure out what was happening with writing across the campus, because there was some writing instruction and support already going on in some disciplines. Our objective was to create a systematic approach to the development of student writing, moving away from an ad-hoc system where just because a student was in a particular program they received assistance with their writing.

In 2007, Lawrence Cleary and I were employed to set up the Regional Writing Centre. For that first piece, the Writing Centre did have a connection with language and humanities; the first directors, Professors Angela Chambers and Caroline Graham from the then named Department of Language, Literature, Culture and Communication had driven the initial conversations and bid for funding, which ensured the establishment of the Centre.

RR: What do you mean by knowledge economy?

ÍO’S: In an Irish higher education context, preparing students for a knowledge economy is about preparing graduates for employment in industry which is based on knowledge-intensive activities. Consequently, intellectual capital is of utmost importance in such an economy. In line with that goal, UL articulated its graduate attributes. We have six attributes: knowledgeable, proactive, creative, responsible, collaborative, and articulate{1}. They mean articulate orally and in writing, and in the different media, using all types of technology, so that our students are articulate [communicators] and prepared to work in a knowledge economy.

RR: In 2007, where did UL anticipate graduates would enter the economy?

ÍO’S: At the time, there was a huge drive around STEM. There still is in Ireland.

We have large numbers of big companies in these sectors; for example. Ireland has attracted many pharmaceutical and technological companies from across the globe in recent years, companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Apple, Dell, Facebook, to name a few. UL has four faculties that cover the major subject areas. We have Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Business; Education and Health Sciences, which includes a Medical School; and Science and Engineering. UL prides itself of having the highest rate year on year of employability amongst Irish higher-education institutions. All of our students do an internship. That was quite an initiative at the time in Ireland, when the co-operative education programme was established in the 1980s at UL. UL is very new, only going to be thirty years this year. Today, UL has one of the largest co-operative education programmes in the EU. We pride ourselves in that entrepreneurship and innovation, and that piece around employability is significant for UL.

RR: It’s interesting how writing initiatives are driven by a changing national economy with curricular initiatives guided by where a university wants its graduates to enter the job market.

ÍO’S: There’s a huge emphasis on the jobs market in Ireland, so much so that I, at times, take a little bit of issue with it because I feel that one of the days they’re going to have us doing the Health and Safety and Manual Handling courses as well. There’s this notion that our students should be ready to walk in the door and be employed. To me, there’s a huge mismatch between formation and education, and employability. Of course, we want to prepare our graduates for employment, but there’s also a big piece of that that—sometimes I think there is too much emphasis on having our students ready to walk into a specific job.

RR: At my institution, the struggle is around preparation of students to be good citizens and preparation to enter the job market.

ÍO’S: I like that education is not just about the job. In Ireland, from the day a student enters university program, they are asked “What are you going to be?” Students start on a track to be a doctor, a nurse, or a teacher. I can always remember studying Applied Languages, and my poor grandfather saying to me, “Well, what will you be?” We’ve always been very driven by employment in Ireland. Students start on a program of study when they enter university that is very defined with a very clear pathway. Our students don’t struggle with the decisions about which course to take when. Everything is very prescriptive in terms of their development.

That sentiment is now changing because some of the jobs don’t even exist yet for our graduates. We are moving a little bit more towards common entry programs. For example, our first-year engineering now is common entry. In second year, students specialize in mechanical, aeronautical, etc. There’s a little bit of flexibility, but that’s very recent.

RR: At the undergraduate level, the U.S. is different. Students enter university, and there’s time for them to figure out a course of study. My daughter, for example, is in her final year of high school. She’ll have a bit of time when she enters university to figure out what she wants to study through the coursework that she takes. Along with graduate attributes, there is a push towards marketable skills which students can bring to the knowledge economy.

ÍO’S: Our eighteen-year-olds are under a huge amount of pressure to choose the right programme of study at third level while still at high school. One of the most significant reasons for dropout in first year at the university is because students are in the wrong program. As a result, addressing issues of retention is one of the significant goals of the University at the moment because losing students costs the University a lot of money. Retention is one of the drivers at the moment for the Writing Centre in terms of university strategic goals.

RR: If a student decides, “I’m in the wrong place,” can they move?

ÍO’S: They can do an internal transfer if their course of study is related. It has to be within a specific amount of time, and they have to have achieved sufficient points in the Leaving Certificate examination for that particular programme. If they don’t have the points, students sometimes repeat the Leaving Certification because college entry in Ireland is all based on points from their Leaving Certificate exam.

RR: In 2007, the first stage of the Writing Centre was driven by the knowledge economy and established through national funding. What happened next?

ÍO’S: We started thinking about sustainability very early because the Strategic Innovation Funds died three years later. In that first period, we put together an academic and a business plan for the Writing Centre. We based it on top schools around the world having writing centers. We cited stats and figures from top schools in the US. UL’s president at the time had done his graduate studies in the U.S., and he was familiar with academic models from the US.

In 2010, our new home became the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Our Centre for Teaching and Learning has an important emphasis on faculty development, but also on student learning, whereas a lot of centers for teaching and learning are faculty driven and centered on faculty development. One of the reasons why I was very happy with the move to the Centre for Teaching and Learning was it gave us leverage for faculty development. Had we gone out independently into student affairs or student life, we would be uniquely student facing whereas we went in under the Centre for Teaching and Learning, giving us a role with faculty development. I saw myself and the future of the Centre as a faculty piece rather than just a student piece.

The regional element became somewhat problematic when we were mainstreamed within UL. Now, our resources are primarily for our students here at the University of Limerick. Students in Mary Immaculate College, our sister college, are welcome to use our resources. But they have their own academic support unit, so they tend to take care of business themselves.

There are a couple of pieces that have changed over the years, specifically as a result of the Hunt Report, the National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030, published in January 2011. The Hunt Report put important emphasis on learning and teaching in higher education. It made suggestions for the future for emphasizing and valuing teaching and learning, all around a time in which teaching and learning was starting to be put on the agenda nationally. Up to this point, research had dominated at UL. In response to the Hunt Report, there was a shift to teaching and learning where institutions were expected to take these recommendations on board. The other piece coming out of the Hunt Report was the establishment of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. Their professional development framework puts a huge emphasis on professional development in teaching and learning. Those two national pieces have had an important impact on our work, in the sense that they emphasize the value of teaching and learning, the work that happens within the Centre for Teaching and Learning, and our place within that structure.

Additionally, institutionally, we’re heavily driven by strategic plans. The plan is that the new Teaching, Learning and Assessment Strategy would be part of the University’s new strategic plan. Up to now, the emphasis in the Teaching, Learning and Assessment strategic planning has been on broadening of the undergraduate curriculum and ensuring that our students have broader knowledge rather than deep subject knowledge, which is your typical Irish graduate. In Ireland, students have in-depth knowledge of their subject area, but lack that broader piece that comes with liberal arts. There’s been a push towards broadening the curriculum, the development of the spectrum of graduate attributes. Graduates have in-depth knowledge of their subject, but also they must be articulate, knowledgeable, problem-solvers, and creative thinkers.

This shift to broaden student learning to incorporate the graduate attributes has created space for the Writing Centre’s agenda. Our mission is to develop that conversation on writing, talking about embedding writing in disciplines. The new emphasis on teaching and learning has given us more leverage within the institution. That’s the national piece, and local piece, that has driven a lot of where we are at the moment.

There is an increasing emphasis on student engagement and success in the institution. The Student Engagement and Success Unit is a working group, with one person from the Centre for Teaching and Learning, one person from the Library, and one person from Student Affairs. I like that they’ve connected that at the high levels, because it guides people on how to be connected on the ground. I think that the new vice president is going to bring a much greater sense of embedding student support in the faculties than has been the case. For the Centre for Teaching and Learning and the Writing Centre, while we’re embedded, we’re still seen as quite separate; we’re centralized support, and we’re outside of the faculties. One of the new vice president’s ambitions is embedding that student engagement and the teaching and learning role that exist within the faculties.

This relationship serves the Writing Centre very well, because the piece that we’ve struggled with is embedding our resources in the faculties. We’re not going to have a stand-alone Writing Across the Curriculum or a Writing in Disciplines program as you would in the US. The Writing Centre serves that purpose. We’re kind of a de facto WID/WAC programme.

RR: For you, the academic side is very closely linked to the student side.

ÍO’S: Yes. Our faculty are encouraged to engage in CTL’s Graduate Diploma/Masters in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship in Higher Education. When our faculty go for progression across the merit bar, or apply for a new position, a Diploma in Teaching and Learning is very much valued.

That value of teaching relates back to the development of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and the subsequent development of the National Professional Development Framework for all who teach in higher education. The National Forum maintains that there are lots of pathways to attaining that professional development. At UL, one of our routes has been our Diploma in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship. The Writing Centre is heavily involved in the program. I have taught and coordinated many of the scholarship modules on the program and lead that element of the program. While in the early days, scholarship was very much around faculty publication in disciplinary research, I’ve nicely changed a lot of that focus to incorporate the scholarship of teaching and learning, and, most importantly, there is an important focus on teaching, supervising and mentoring research and writing, with participants reflecting on their own writing and research processes and using this knowledge to enhance these important skills in their own students.

RR: If someone is going up for a progression, they could also have scholarship on teaching?

ÍO’S: Yes. If you look at the modules, there are three scholarship modules in the entire program for a total of sixty credits with twenty-one of the sixty credits on scholarship. Within the scholarship modules, there is an important emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Many of the participants continue to complete an MA for which they must write a research paper on pedagogic research rather than disciplinary research. One of our roles in the Writing Centre is to support faculty in their own writing development. The scholarship modules on the programme provide an important opportunity to support faculty in their own writing development but also the development of their own students’ writing. In that diploma program, staff do quite a bit of activity around their research, writing and publication strategy in their disciplinary research. We also introduce them to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Then, we ask staff to take everything that they’ve learned and ask them to articulate how they use this knowledge to become a teacher, mentor, and supervisor of writing.

RR: That’s wonderful! That’s where you’re getting the WID/WAC component.

ÍO’S: Yes! About three or four years ago, we took a proposal to our Teaching and Learning Committee for a Writing in Disciplines program and for additional resources for the Writing Centre to roll out our Writing in Disciplines program. We looked at writing intensive modules. Apparently, there was not much appetite for such an approach at the time.

At the time, there was the program review for our professional diploma, and I was charged with the review of the scholarship modules. The review of the program provided an important opportunity to integrate more writing into the disciplines. The scholarship modules are therefore how we have done WID and had some success in integrating writing into the disciplines. We have fifteen to twenty people on the program every year, and many of them go on to their Master’s in Teaching and Learning and Scholarship where they do a pedagogic research project. They do a writer’s retreat as part of the degree. In each of the three scholarship modules, one of which comprises the retreat, the participants are required to reflect on how they use the knowledge acquired about their own research and writing processes to inform how they teach writing, mentor writing, and supervise writing. One of the activities which they must complete as part of their coursework is to repurpose one of their modules towards the integration of more writing by changing the activities and introducing writing and writing-to-learn activities to help students achieve the intended learning outcomes.

RR: There, you’re creating WID.

ÍO’S: Yes, there’s our WID. It’s a slow burn approximately fifteen faculty engaging with the program every year. Some will take the WID model onboard; some won’t. Speaking of proud moments, I was at a teaching awards ceremony recently, and the awardee was one of our graduates from the diploma. In the middle of her talk, she said, “And look! There’s loads of writing in it!” She looked down at the audience at me, and she just said, “Now, Íde, you’ll be so proud. I had never thought about writing as a tool for learning like that.”

RR: Stealth WID curriculum! WID might not be an official or named curriculum, but there are ways to get people engaged in the teaching of writing.

ÍO’S: Yes! My example is from a context where there have been serious constraints. For faculty, every day there’s something new that people want them to do. Our approach has been very gentle. The relationship I have with faculty is very organic.

The other way of coming at WID are the one-to-one consultations with faculty where we encourage them to integrate writing into their disciplines. I may co-teach with faculty or simply help them with writing an assignment brief. Our student numbers in the Writing Centre, our one-to-one numbers are dropping. We’re not sure why—maybe because WID is having an impact.

The professional development framework for all who teach in higher education has a few domains. One of the domains is around faculty’s own scholarship and disciplinary knowledge, another is around communication. We input into that through our support with the program to help faculty with their own writing development. We run retreats, we run writers’ groups, we have PhD Writers’ Week, and Faculty Writers’ Days/Retreats. We assist faculty with their own communication skills.

This discussion brings us kind of to where the Writing Centre is now. I have a faculty-facing focus, while my colleague Lawrence looks after most of the direct student engagement with the Centre. I am course director for the Graduate Diploma/MA program, which has provided important interaction and opportunities to work with faculty. Although I won’t be the course director forever, this position has been hugely beneficial for the Writing Centre.

RR: You are involved with a group that promotes writing in Ireland. What are the range of issues that your group addresses?

ÍO’S: Our big issue now facing INEW, the Irish Network for the Enhancement of Writing) and EDIN, the Educational Developers in Ireland Network is impact, namely, demonstrating the impact of the work that we do as academic or educational developers. How do we show the impact of the work that we’re doing in ways that will be meaningful for senior management? How we’re articulating it isn’t exactly how the powers-that-be and senior management want us to articulate it. They want us to show nice correlations between student retention and the work that we do. For example, if a student visits the Writing Centre x amount of times, their grades are going to increase by x. They want quantitative measurements.

Before they tell us what the measurements are, EDIN is trying to put standards in place to evidence the impact of the work that we do. We were able to invite expertise from a similar association in the UK, who has been through some similar issues recently. We’re going to get the standard right in terms of education development, and then take this work to INEW. Our hope is that we can define what the appropriate metrics are to demonstrate the impact of our work.

The other big issue is sustainability. I think that’s where others have struggled too: How do we mainstream this emphasis on writing? The sustainability issue is one that we ask in terms of finance: How do we keep doing what we’re doing with more limited resources every year?

I’ve focused an awful lot on external factors and institutions. To shift focus, the pedagogic kind of drive around the work that we do is partly from the U.S. and the field of rhetoric and composition. I’ve learnt from Lawrence a language that I wouldn’t even have known a lot about to talk about writing. My PhD research was around the process approach to writing, but it was in a second language writing context so I had a very heavy applied linguistics focus. My background was corpus linguistics, looking at text and using the text to help guide the student in writing; for example, students would analyse introductions in model texts to identify the moves of expert writers and then use this to help guide them in creating a research space in their introduction. In this applied linguistics kind of tradition, students are creating their research space and using textual analysis to help inform their approach to writing. One of the modules on the program includes a piece around the Swalesian linguistic analysis. Faculty love it and they hate it. The scientists say, “Oh, my God, I don’t need to know about linguistics!” But then, they will all come back and say, “But it’s a real useful tool.”

The European context around the time of our introduction in 2007 and in Ireland was very heavily focused on academic support units that were very skills-driven with supports such as oral presentation and writing skills, all in a very product-oriented fashion. Our Irish school leavers coming into UL are very product-focused because the leaving certificate examination is very product-focused. There isn’t a lot of time given to the process. So, when students come to UL, they want support with the product. Whereas, students need to understand that the produce will improve by adjusting the writing process.

RR: You saw the need to look to the US which is process-based rather than to Europe which is skill-based.

ÍO’S: A lot of literature I was exposed to was very process-based in the States. Lawrence and I did a presentation at the European Writing Centers Association—and jokingly, we came with flags to signal the US tradition and the Irish tradition, because they were seen as very different. But in some ways, the traditions are similar, because if you take the applied linguistics and look at it, a lot of that discipline is about academic literacies.

I do think changes in the post-primary curriculum are going to have an impact. Our students sit in study halls for ten days at the end of their secondary education for a leaving certificate exam that their entire educational career weighs on. Sadly, I feel that the more students can regurgitate, the better they do.

RR: The leaving certificate is very product-based, but it’s changing in higher education and at the secondary level.

ÍO’S: I think so. The junior certificate, which would be at about fifteen, so middle way through high school, that would be equivalent to the GCSEs in the UK. It’s a state examination, but it’s in preparation for the leaving certificate. A lot of that assessment has been moved back into the curriculum, with an important emphasis now on continuous assessment. Teachers have greater autonomy over the process. But it’s still considered a state exam where every student in the country takes the exact same exam at 10a.m. in the morning. There’s state secrecy around these examinations.

RR: What is meant by internationalization in the Irish context?

ÍO’S: Internationalization is around not just incoming international students and sending our students abroad, but also it allows students who never go abroad to experience an international curriculum. Our curriculum is more international and our students have more exposure to colleagues and peers from around the world. UL welcomed over three thousand international students to its campus last year, the majority as degree-seeking students, the remainder as visiting students through the Erasmus or Non-EU Exchange programme or the Study Abroad programme UL’s Erasmus success supports not only student mobility but, equally, high numbers availing of Erasmus+ Teacher and Staff Mobility and International Credit Mobility ensure that faculty and staff are bringing an international curriculum to their students. Continuing professional development for faculty and staff through an Internationalisation module and intercultural training workshop ensures that we are prepared for the increasingly multi-cultural classroom. Internationalisation is a strategic priority for the University. International students, like elsewhere, bring in important funds.

UL looked to the Writing Centre to support international students. However, our tutors aren’t language teachers. Our tutors will say that a lot of the issues that come with international students are language issues, as opposed to writing issues, and these students struggle quite a bit. However, the university is not looking to change our budget. They’re actually cutting it every year. I think internationalization often brings with it an ethical and moral responsibility.

The students are paying lots of money, and I’m not sure that they’re being supported as well as they should be. I get so cross because, you know, when students arrive at university, and I say, [speaking crossly] “They’re not able to do academic writing!” I say, “But they’ve never had to do academic writing, so why are you surprised?”

For us, the drive there has not been just writing per se, but it’s all that writing brings, in terms of its power to help with problem solving and critical thinking.

Notes

1. https://www.ul.ie/ctl/sites/default/files/graduateattributes_050918_hires.pdf.