Why did you choose Cadmus?

I teach a first-year unit, so we put a lot of emphasis and value on the development of academic skills. Cadmus' ability to support the development of academic skills fit the ethos of the unit and was a good fit for us.

How did you use Cadmus?

Before Cadmus, we delivered the assessment task through the LMS in an assessment folder. This time, we were able to move the entire assessment task into Cadmus. I showed students the tool in the tutorial, and they got straight in there to start. That's what I like about it — it's simple, intuitive, and easy.

How did your students respond?

Once students got in, they loved it. They wanted to use it for all their other units! What's useful is that everything is in one place. They can write and get the right information as they need it. To get referencing support, they just click a button. When they paste in content, they get an education notification. It's a great way to get students engaged and keep them engaged. I believe this helps to reduce academic integrity issues. Other units with the same cohort, had much higher incidents of academic misconduct.

How did your teaching change?

My teaching has always had a focus on supporting academic writing, so the only thing that changed was using Cadmus. I definitely saw an improvement in student engagement and believe the Learning Analytics played an important role.

I could see where the cohort was at, then go to lectures and tell the students to get cracking! It was great to build those reminders into the lecturers. I also found the ability to sort the class list by groups, as well as the Templates, really useful for streamlining my workflow.

Would you recommend Cadmus to a colleague?

I'd totally recommend it — I want to use it across all our first-year units! It's a platform that supports academic writing, and it works. It improved my students' engagement with the task and support materials. This had a positive impact on outcomes, such as better referencing, reduced plagiarism, and better marks.

I think it has something to do with students feeling more confident in the writing space meaning the have more time to engage with the concepts, and ultimately, develop a better understanding of the concepts taught — but that's just my theory!