Notes:

Let’s now turn to the academic-social dimension shown by the horizontal arrows in the figure. A key goal in higher education is to provide an integrated experience where the academic and the social mutually support student development. This accounts for the direction of the arrows pointing to each other. In the academic-social dimension it is assumed that academic experiences can trigger supportive social experiences, and that social experiences can enhance and strengthen academic experiences.
 This importance of the social dimension has been a strong finding from the REAP project. Many of our best course redesigns have shown that when academic structures and social interactions are both organised so as to support student learning, there are positive learning benefits. The academic seems to encourage social bonding and networking in a way that creates a positive backwash effect on academic learning.
 An example here might be where the teacher organises structured activities where students work in groups on an open-ended task to produce an agreed output. For example, in the ‘psychology case study’ presented by Baxter (2007) in this conference the students work online in groups of 6-7 to write an 800-word essay. Research shows that in scenarios like this, the social interaction not only scaffolds the academic writing skills of individual students but that it also provides positive social support. Students in the Baxter study produced academic work of a quality higher than that seen before in the department. Baxter reports that first year students produced writing that was equivalent in calibre to that of second year and sometimes third year students.
 The next section explores the application of these two dimensions and the ten principles in relation to a first year course.