Fantastic foursome looking to scoop national prize

Psychology specialists from Teesside University are taking to the national stage to showcase their innovative tool which is designed to help students with academic writing.

The four-strong team, made up of two current students, a recent graduate and a senior lecturer, has reached the national finals of the Jisc Summer of Student Innovation competition.

The competition required entrants to submit ideas where technology is used to improve education, research and student life.

Final year psychology student Holly Shahverdi, 20, second year psychology student Nadine Spence, 21, psychology graduate Luke Kennedy, 22 and Senior Lecturer in psychology Dr Sue Becker designed SALT, a writing tool which addresses and aids different aspects of academic writing – grammar, language, structure and use of relevant source material.

The team impressed judges with their idea to turn the learning tool into a digital app and have been awarded £2,000 to help them develop a pitch. They will attend a four day design workshop in Manchester before travelling to London at the end of August to pitch their idea to Jisc with the chance to win further funding and support to develop their idea.

Dr Becker said: 'When the project started I wanted to involve a student from every year group. It is fantastic to see how well the idea has been received and we are the only team from the North East to make it through to the national final of the competition.

'Through initial conversations with the students, one of their biggest concerns when coming to university was that they were unfamiliar with academic writing. We decided to develop a tool which covers various aspects of academic writing and allows users to monitor and assess their progress.

'SALT provides a simple but effective way to identify strengths and weaknesses in your academic writing style and allows you to work independently to improve the quality of your work.'

The SALT team are recording their progress through designated Twitter and Facebook pages and are also in the process of populating their own YouTube channel.

Holly, from Middlesbrough, said: 'The competition has definitely improved our confidence and given us real world experience of working on a project that can genuinely help university students. It has made us more aware of some of the challenges new students face and how we can create new ideas to address those challenges.'

You can follow the SALT team on Twitter @SALTtool or like their Facebook page

---