A number of colleagues have expressed an interest in a writing skills project aiming to explore the ways in which students can be supported in improving their writing using online resources and facilities, possibly in combination with other forms of support such as face-to-face teaching and individual support from a peer or mentor.

A project of this kind should benefit from the expertise and experience of practitioners within the Sussex Learning Network and further afield. However, I am aware that the topic of students and writing is an area which abounds not only in resources, expertise and approaches but which is also populated with a good deal of often contentious beliefs, values and opinions. My own view is that a writing skills project needs to take account not only of the resources that are available but also the ways in which they are used by students. In this respect an understanding of the writing or literacy practices of students needs a complementary understanding of institutional practices and expectations many of which seem challenged by, for example, the different ways in which many students currently undertake writing tasks including their use of internet resources.

Such an approach which looks at the needs of novice writers and the ways in which expertise can be developed stands distinct from (in my experience) that persistent deficit model which informs the folk theories aired in staffrooms: students can’t or don’t want to write etc.