Students' motivation for language peer mentoring, and their perception of themselves as linguistic resources During the past decade co-student mentoring to strengthen the social and professional learning environment has become common practice in Norwegian higher education. Between 2018 and 2021, Oslo Metropolitan University developed a language-mentoring program where students assist co-students to enhance their Norwegian oral skills. The target group was second language students. Solid oral skills in the instruction language are required to ensure high quality in subject learning, both for oral and written academic practice, and in theoretical and practical contexts. Half of the applicants for the student mentor positions had Norwegian as a second language themselves, or family members with a first language other than Norwegian.

The Unit for research support at the HVL (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) library has since the late 2010s offered a series of relatively short introductions to various topics we believe to be useful for researchers, in particular PhD candidates and early career researchers. In addition to “traditional” library topics such as searching, publishing, open science, reference management, databases and other digital resources, we have included sessions on academic writing. The author of this essay has been responsible for these sessions since 2020, and here I will describe more specifically what has been included (and not) within the framework of “academic writing for researchers” and how I understand this topic, that is what I think is particularly relevant for researchers to think about in terms of writing. I will present the theoretical framework I have made use of (in particular Joseph Harris’s book Rewriting) and discuss some examples of academic writing that I find to be productive and informative to discuss. I also take into consideration recent events in the Norwegian public sphere that have created new challenges for us librarians who try to guide academics as writers. The goal of the essay is to contribute to a further reflection on and discussion of what “academic writing for researchers by the library” should be.

At Østfold University College, we have focused on interdisciplinary collaboration to provide a comprehensive introduction to academic writing for first-year students, emphasizing a standardized program to ensure consistency in instruction. The article is divided into two studies. Both studies aimed to improve first-year students' academic writing skills by evaluating different instructional methods. The research questions for the studies were as follows: Study 1: Can the use of pre- and post-tests in an e-learning course in academic writing help students acquire new knowledge? Study 2: How do students experience blended teaching in academic writing? Study 1 examined whether pre- and post-tests in an e-learning course could help students acquire new knowledge in academic writing. An e-learning package was developed around eight themes: problem statement, text writing, sources, source criticism, study techniques, referencing techniques, plagiarism, and ethics. Forty-four first-year students took a pre-test of fifteen questions and received immediate feedback. After completing the instructional components for each theme, they took a post-test. Results showed significant improvement in post-tests, indicating increased understanding of the themes. Study 2 aimed to establish a quality-assured course package combining e-learning with on-campus instruction. A Facebook group was also created for students to ask questions about academic writing. Fifty-eight first-year students completed a questionnaire containing twelve different questions related to the evaluation of the various teaching methods in the blended instruction. In study 2, the evaluation of the academic writing course revealed that all three teaching methods were perceived as important for learning.

In the face of a more demanding academic reality where text-generating AI is becoming part of the infrastructure of our society, writing tutors are also forced to consider to what extent they should adapt their teaching to the new situation. In this article, I argue that Norwegian, dialogue-based writing pedagogy is rooted in considerations that make it well-positioned, at least in the short term, to meet the new situation we find ourselves in. I justify this by showing that these considerations coincide with the points of reference that Hannah Arendt identified as crucial for discretionary assessments, and thus for thoughtful actions. In the longer term, the situation is more unclear and more dependent on structural conditions that writing tutors alone do not have control over.

This article presents a best practice example of training writing mentors in higher education, specifically at Oslo Metropolitan University. The training program is presented in detail to enable readers to adapt and apply it in their own contexts. The underlying pedagogical source of inspiration for the training is confluent pedagogy, a form of discovery learning which seeks to integrate intellectual, affective, and psychomotor processes. Confluent training aims to make these three elements conflate towards the same aim: learning. The training employs active participation methods, enabling writing mentors to personally engage with the teaching material. This experiential approach, combined with reflective practices, ensures that the acquired knowledge becomes personally meaningful rather than merely something to be memorized and repeated.

The Writing Centre at The Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) offers an essay course as an optional 40-hour module which is integrated in the development program for basic competence in University Pedagogy. We initiated the course because faculty teachers supervising students writing an academic essay as a bachelor's assignment requested training in essay supervision. In this essay, I reflect on the challenges I have faced in the development and implementation of the essay course, above all why some teachers turn out to become so insecure, or so it seems, when faced with open evaluation criteria. What makes this genre so difficult? How can we help teachers become more confident in writing academic essays so that they can guide students in a more productive way in their writing process and assess the essays they write? When we asked the course participants to write their own essays and supervise each other in the writing process during the course seminars, it became clear that they too, just like the students, want clear answers. Many of them tend to ask for ready-made assessment criteria and guidelines for good academic essays – for both students, lecturers and examiners. I suspect that some faculty teachers prefer to operate with templates when giving assignments to students. However, reflections on professional experience, the very hallmark of an academic essay, can rarely be squeezed into a ready-made template. I argue that the insistence on templates actually makes writing, supervising and assessing more challenging.

In contemporary digital society, information literacy is increasingly important and viewed as a necessary life skill for all ages, social groups, and professional sectors, hence also affecting higher education. Universities need to develop strategies and approaches to integrate these skills into course syllabi, assignments and assessments based on close library-faculty collaboration. However, librarians and faculty members in higher education traditionally often have separate agendas and limited collaboration. This paper illustrates the background and process of constructing a successful librarian-faculty partnership, as a shared framework entitled the ‘Scientific Wave’ throughout a bachelor’s program in business administration to enhance students’ critical thinking, research skills and information literacy in particular. A case study approach was applied, and data collection was conducted during 2014–2019. The outcomes of a shared framework and library-faculty collaboration are discussed from the perspectives of students, library, and faculty. Findings show that a shared framework based on close collaboration between librarians and faculty, strategic anchoring and visualization in curricula, syllabi, course objectives and assessments developed in line with the mission of the university have an impact on students’ information literacy skills during their education and after graduation. The Scientific Wave is a co-designed continuous framework based on the separate but complementary skills of librarians and faculty to provide students with tools for critical and creative thinking, research skills and lifelong learning in today’s digital society.

In 2017, 120 University West nursing students wrote a scientific report as an examination. Merely 30 students passed on their first attempt and one of the identified shortcomings concerned information literacy. In collaboration with the course coordinators, the liaison librarian modified the course design adding new contents as well as new assignments to create a kickstart for the students who lack the information literacy required in higher education. The module in information literacy training was extended to provide the students with the skills needed for successful results and thus making them better equipped for the rest of their studies, as well as for lifelong learning. This best practice article accounts for the course development, focusing on library instruction. Furthermore, it posits that the principles of andragogy, student activating methods and the united effort to meet the students where they are, have enhanced their learning process and consequently their information literacy. In 2020 and 2021, the students who passed the scientific report examination on their first attempt more than doubled. Due to librarian involvement, new pedagogical approaches, and a fruitful collaboration with course coordinators, these students’ information literacy skills seem to have improved.