Abstract

Postsecondary students, including many English language learners, need effective skills in academic writing, especially source-based expository writing skills, to achieve academic success. However, research has shown that many first- and second-year undergraduate students are inadequately prepared and lack skills in both organizing writing to convey major and supporting ideas with critical perspectives and in reading comprehension. Limited research is available on addressing both skills with innovative instruction using digital technologies that appeal to these students. Therefore, this article draws on the relevant literature and my recent research projects with my team, which developed and examined the impact of two interventions on enhancing the source-based writing skills of students in a Canadian university and community college. It focuses on two key aspects that are of interest to this present volume, contextualization and socialization; that is, a case-study approach to providing contextualized writing instructions by using and developing multimodal open educational resources (OERs) and peer collaboration throughout the reading-to-write process employing a cloud-based platform.