The collaboration between the EAC project team and the Department of Sports Science and Physical Education (SSPE) started in the summer of 2017. The focus of our collaboration is on research writing; specifically, ongoing support is provided to empower students to complete research proposals (in the course SPED3630 Introduction to Research Methods) and final-year project reports (in the course SPED4900 Research Project) across two academic years. Since 2017, we have been supporting five cohorts of students from the 2-year and 5-year programmes respectively.

Needs Analysis: To have a better grasp of the difficulties encountered by the SSPE students in their research writing journey, samples of their research proposals and research reports were collected and analysed. Based on the textual analyses, some common problems related to macro issues (e.g., overall structure and coherence) and micro issues (e.g., language use and citation of references) were identified, which were converted into contextualized teaching materials for the two-part research writing workshops.

Personalized Support: Understanding that research writing is a challenge to many SSPE students, individual feedback was provided to their research proposal draft (in the course SPED3630 Introduction to Research Methods) in an attempt to provide individualized support.

Based on the analysis of students’ research proposal draft submitted to the EAC project team and the final version submitted to the teachers of SPED3630, it was found that they had made significant improvements, especially in the areas of referencing, introduction writing, as well as literature review writing.

At the same time, the support from the EAC project team has been highly recognized by the SSPE Department in a sense that students’ participation in the research writing workshops has been made compulsory and specified on the Final-year Project Student Handbook.