Higher education has experienced huge ‘massification’ and universities are considered key drivers in the knowledge economy (Olssen and Peters, 2005). The embedding and entrenchment of neoliberalism into Higher education has led to several key tenets now becoming accepted and remaining unquestioned. Firstly, massification is a key trend (McCarthy, 2009) and is followed religiously by almost every higher education institution worldwide. Secondly, the ideas of the development of human capital (Becker, 2011) mean that students now assume the mantle of ‘responsibilisation’ (Bonnano, 2017) for their own learning and wellbeing. Thirdly, the appeal and allure of universalisation and of applicable, transferable solutions and practices (cf. Plant, 2011) to education related challenges remains eternal. Understandably therefore, to address challenges with this massification, much literature considers generic study skills to provide support for students (Gettinger, and Seibert. 2002). Such generic skills are ideal for Higher Education institutions for their alignment with the key tenets outlined above. Firstly, they can provide help both to students and to lecturers to overcome the challenges of larger numbers of students as, if the numbers are high, then the support exists to help the students (and lecturers). Secondly, they align with responsibilisation and human capital as students are responsibilised to go to central units and to find out points to help themselves. Thirdly, such study skills are increasingly delivered from central units and presented in a format that is universal, and applicable to all; everyone needs study skills, all subjects need it, and the skills are transferable (cf. Hyland & Johnson, 1998). However, an alternative approach suggests this support should be more ‘embedded’ (Wingate, 2006), and that we should ‘Do Away’ with generic skills and lean more towards a version of Study Skills that is ‘embedded’ into subjects. Nevertheless, even with such alternative approaches, Study Skills are not done away with so much as taught within modules and courses (Richards & Pilcher, 2020), so have transformed from being standalone in nature to being ‘bolt on’  This paper outlines results from an  approach that differs from one that employs Study Skills in either of these ways, and outlines how the skills students need have been taught both in, and through, the specific subject content that they need for their main degrees. This approach draws on subject content to support students’ development (Pilcher and Richards, 2022). Here, it is the subject that is the guiding key focus, the ‘skills’ subservient to it. Where in previous models, students may be taught ‘essay structures’ and asked to apply it to their work, in this new approach students are shown a subject essay and the key features of approach are highlighted to them to achieve quality with the question answer. Notably, this knowledge and these ‘skills’ were taught in a credit bearing module than ran in parallel with an introductory module students followed on an MBA. Here, the subject content was selected collaboratively between the lecturer delivering the support module and the lecturer delivering the subject degree module. We describe how we adopted this approach to address the challenges of teaching large cohorts of students from diverse educational/academic backgrounds with differing academic expectations to those of universities in the UK. This paper achieves two main objectives: (a) to outline our collaborative teaching, learning and assessment methods of academic skills subject-focused support and subject domain modules (b) to identify the effectiveness of learning of academic skills when subject focused, and their application on assessments of a specific subject domain. Such an approach and model are, we argue, directly applicable to other subject domains and areas.

The proposal draws on data from results related to two parallel modules delivered simultaneously on a new MBA Programme and which adopted the approach of a credit bearing module that included subject focused academic support and which ran parallel and in tandem with an MBA subject content delivery module. Data in the form of student attainment results is compared with student attainment results from four subject domain modules of a previous MBA programme which adopted a model of study skills as non-credit bearing and delivered in a standalone format . Both MBA programmes were followed by similar background cohorts of early career students with business and non-business academic qualifications (representing 50 percent each) and less or no industry experience in their undergraduate studies. The genesis of the new programme and approach of having two parallel modules stemmed from previous experience of finding it ineffective to have support where ‘academic skills’ were either delivered ‘stand-alone’ or as ‘bolt on’, as even if considered ‘embedded’ they remained ineffective. Instead, a credit bearing module delivering the tools and knowledge (Study skills module) students needed, and using tasks based on subject content students needed for their MBA was delivered in parallel with the introductory subject students followed as a parallel module (Subject domain module). In the former, students did compulsory weekly tasks and writings on fundamental areas of the subject domain module and assessments. These compulsory tasks were for example writings on operations management or marketing and fed forward directly into assessments students did on their MBA subject module, including being given feedback on drafts of MBA subject module assessments. This study compares the results of the cohort following this new programme against those from a previous cohort of the same programme who followed a programme without this parallel learning support approach. The grade results of four modules the students enrolled at the start of the old programme were analysed to derive pass numbers, failures, and academic misconduct cases . The paper employs descriptive and hypothesis testing draw conclusions. The hypothesis tested are H1: Grades of the subject module at first year T1 of the new programme is higher than the grades of the old programme without academic subject support embedded in it. H2: Students with less attendance, (less engagement in weekly activities), and with no draft submissions for feedback underperformed compared to the students with high engagement and a drafts submission for feedback.

In the previous iteration of the MBA where ‘study skills’ were delivered in standalone or bolt on type models, the grade results analysis of four modules students enrolled at the first trimester showed a high number of failures, and many instances of academic misconduct in the first attempt of the course work. However, with eth new approach of collaborative teaching and subject focused support, the grade results analysis of the students enrolled for the first two modules of the trimester of the new delivery model showed a marked improvement in the results of students following the novel learning approach, subject focused support embedded learning and teaching model. The level of success, benefits and challenges involved with this approach are discussed. Primarily, and specifically, it is concluded that there are positive implications for students in terms of success and awareness of what is required. When students follow repeated compulsory tasks that are subject content focused and involve them submitting these tasks onto commonly used plagiarism detection software tools, they can directly see and learn what is required of them in their subject content assignments and do so in an environment that is without judgement and allows them to discover the different expectations of the HE system in the UK. Further, and moving forward, we conclude that in terms of lecturer and programme workload there are significant implications in terms of reduced time required to be spent on resits and cases of following academic conduct (ACO). Given time spent on re-sits and ACO cases is something which is not counted in most workloads and could be freed up for other ventures, we conclude overall that the new approach has only positives, primarily for students, but also for lecturers.

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