Effect of Extension-Based Capacity-Building Intervention on Academic Writing Proficiency in Research Discourse Among Emerging Researchers: A Pre-Experimental Study
Keywords:
capacity-building intervention; academic writing proficiency; research discourse; pre-experimental research design; university extension programAbstract
This research determined the effect of an extension-based capacity development on academic writing proficiency in research discourse as a learning intervention in enhancing the research writing skills and outputs of the 72 emerging researchers purposefully sampled based on their research competence. Upon examination of research interests and learning strands, the emerging researchers formed 12 groups with 6 members in each group to display collaborative research writing as an inherent feature of the intervention. The study utilized a pre-experimental design, particularly one-group pretest–post-test design and was also supported by qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews and extracted research outputs for triangulation. A content- validated and reliability-tested questionnaire was utilized focused on four research writing domains to describe the academic writing competencies of the respondents, while a four-criterion rubric was employed to describe the level of quality of their research outputs. Consequently, the participants demonstrated a substantial improvement across all areas of academic research writing, as evident in the significant results with p-values ranging from 0.01 to 0.04, reflecting the effectiveness of the intervention’s structure, inherent features, and delivery. The emerging researchers initially struggled in writing literature review-based research gap analysis and significance of the study, including results’ discussion and study’s implications. Nevertheless, the integration of lectures, hands-on activities, and mentoring as features of the extension-based capacity development provided a comprehensive learning experience for research writing competencies improvement, thus making it a viable educational platform that strengthens academic rigor of research writing and scholarly outputs.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.7.27
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