Group items tagged

Writers groups can bring faculty members together for dedicated individual writing time, team brainstorming sessions, reading and discussions of books designed to improve writing productivity, and peer review of works in progress. By creating a supportive interdisciplinary group for idea exchange, writers groups rely on internal expertise, inspire interdisciplinary discussions, and create community (Benson-Brown, 2006).  In addition, scheduled writing time that leads to peer review of works in progress creates accountability that helps some faculty finish writing projects that otherwise might have languished.

Writers groups raise awareness in participants by helping them to see challenges faced by student writers and by offering them an opportunity to reflect on teaching through their writing activities. 

One basic success has been use of a facilitator to set meeting schedules, obtain meeting space, and keep group members on task via their commitment to participate at regular times.

A published paper has an abstract as a way for fellow researchers and students to quickly glance at whether the paper is useful for them. But an abstract is a very short, concise report of the research paper. A lay summary can expand on that and take the important information such as results and make them more prominent.

One challenge I’m considering is how we can better capture and surface information that is currently lost in the submission process. For example, many journals ask for highlights, key findings, implications, publicity/outreach summaries, statements of novelty and so on as part of the submission process, to assist editorial triage and review. Often, this information is never published alongside the article. Why not?

Publishers have worked hard over the last decade to streamline the submission process and reduce the time from submission to publication, but this does not address the issue that causes the largest delay, which is having to reformat and resubmit papers to multiple journals.

communication of complex ideas in an accessible and professional manner

Instead, the call for new tutors was announced through social media, and potential tutors were selected after a review of their submitted writing samples and informal interviews. The new tutors then observed tutoring sessions and attended a one-day training organized by the current tutors. The entire recruitment process has been a valuable experience for the current tutors, who trained new staff in an authentic peer-to-peer manner, building their confidence and knowledge (Girgensohn 132)