ESA Education Section

The prevalence of generally 'poor writing' has been identified as an area of particular concern in our Environmental Management degree also. This becomes particularly obvious in scientific reports, which admittedly require distinct skills.  We place a considerable amount of emphasis on developing writing skills in the first year of the program, however it becomes challenging when this impacts on delivery and time to teach core material. I have been tossing around ideas of developing a 'fundamental skills' course (one semester) which would focus heavily on developing students knowledge of tasks such as writing, scientific report construction, referencing and citation. Has anyone experience in this type of approach to bringing students up to speed or to focusing on the development of these skills early in their programs? Does anyone have any experience with a course similar to the 'fundamental skills' course described?