Following a Literacies Mapping Project which identified the need for specialised academic literacies support and training in the faculty, the FHS Writing Lab officially opened its doors on the 9th of February 2015. Since then, the Writing Lab has been funded by a series of grants from the Department of Higher Education and Training and has provided FHS students and staff with convenient access to specialist writing support on their own campus.
In alignment with funding requirements, the Writing Lab has focussed on capacitating FHS teaching staff with academic literacies training, providing ad hoc and integrated academic literacies workshops, and training postgraduate students as Writing Lab consultants (tutors) as part of supporting a pipeline of black academics. Accordingly, we have focussed on a professional learning approach to consultant training that uses critical reflection in an action research cycle as a primary method.
The work of the Writing Lab contributes to UCT’s Vision 2030 by providing transformative and socially engaged undergraduate and postgraduate educational offerings and resources through both contact and digitally mediated platforms. These offerings enable students to reach their full potential by engaging both the ‘self’, through authorial identity development, and others, by communicating meaning through writing (voice).
The Writing Lab also supports the goal of undertaking transformative research relevant to local and global needs, by providing an environment in which students and staff can develop their authorial identity and writing practices, which are essential to all parts of the research ecosystem. Furthermore, the Writing Lab’s own research consciously adopts a transformative lens in the conceptualization of both research questions and design.
Operationally, the Writing Lab is situated as a unit within the Department of Health Sciences Education (DHSE), but also functions under the auspices of the Language Development Group (LDG) in the Center for Higher Education Development (CHED). As such, there is a close relationship between the main Writing Centre on upper campus, and the Writing Lab, and the Writing Lab coordinator reports to both the HOD of DHSE and the director of the LDG.
