Undergraduate ‘shut up and write’ formative feedback: Boosting productivity and enhancing writing skills

Background In higher education undergraduate teaching, ‘shut up and write’ (SUAW) sessions have gained popularity as a strategy to enhance students’ productivity and writing skills. These structured sessions provide a supportive environment where students can focus on their writing tasks, minimizing distractions and maximizing their output. Methods and materials This project aimed to evaluate the impact of SUAW sessions on Year 2 therapeutic radiography students as they developed research proposals for a summative module assessment. Two whole-day sessions were booked on campus six weeks apart with a staff:student ratio of 1:10. A survey method gathered Likert-style quantitative data and open textual data using a short paper-based questionnaire in the room at the end of the last session. Results The surveys received fifty-five responses. Students enjoyed the SUAW sessions and felt they helped with assignment writing and time management. Many comments indicated that students had engaged with assessment earlier than they would have normally. Module assessment marks compared favourably with those of the previous year. Conclusion The SUAW format was well received by students who found the sessions to be enjoyable and useful. Recommendations include extending the number of planned sessions and increasing the staff:student ratio. Future work should investigate what additional support this initiative can provide specifically to international students. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .