TAA and SAGE Methodspace are co-hosting a series of Tweetchats for the exchange of ideas and resources about academic writing and publishing. Join SAGE Methodspace’s Janet Salmons and TAA’s Eric Schmieder on Twitter Friday, December 1 at 11 a.m. ET using the hashtag #AcWriChat to discuss submitting proposals. [Read more…]
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#AcWriChat TweetChat on Submitting Proposals with TAA & Janet Salmons 12/1 at 11 am ET
November 17, 2017 By Leave a Comment
12/3 TAA Webinar – Practical Strategies for Collaborating With Peers
November 19, 2019 By Leave a Comment
Sometimes collaboration comes naturally. We can communicate honestly to determine shared goals and complete a project. It can be exhilarating to see what can be accomplished when we pool ideas and expertise. Other times, collaboration seems time-consuming and frankly aggravating. Perhaps we thought we were on the same page with our partner(s), only to discover that their sense of time, criteria for quality, or willingness to address problems are not as we expected.
The issues can compound when the number of collaborative partners expands, and when we have less common ground to build upon. When we collaborate with peers from our own discipline or professional, we understand theoretical frameworks and seminal literature that informs our field. We might share similar outlooks with peers from our region, country, or culture. When we expand the collaboration to include peers from outside these familiar groups, attention is needed to the ways we will work together.
Join us Tuesday, December 3 from 2-3 p.m. ET for the TAA Webinar, “Practical Strategies for Collaborating With Peers,” presented by author and coach Janet Salmons, who will show how the approaches described in her book, Learning to Collaborate, Collaborating to Learn, apply to peer collaboration for writing, editing, or other projects.
AcWriMo starts tomorrow – see what we have planned
October 31, 2019 By Leave a Comment
Established in 2011, Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) is “a month-long academic write-a-thon that happens every November”. Here at TAA, we have continued to plan special opportunities for our members to engage in AcWriMo as a group to enhance their individual writing efforts. Some of our members have also created or sponsored additional AcWriMo events throughout the month.
This year, TAA has decided to focus on a theme of “Distinguishing features of academic writing”. Specifically, we have used a list of academic writing features to further focus our weekly TweetChat discussions and shared resources to include: academic precision, complexity, formality, objectivity, and accuracy. Below are several of the planned activities we have scheduled for AcWriMo 2019. [Read more…]
Academic Writing Month: Community and progress
October 17, 2019 By Leave a Comment
One book to complete, another one to start. It must be time for Academic Writing Month! November is almost here, and writers around the world will be looking for tips and encouragement so they can make progress on articles, books, theses, or dissertations. We’ll share strategies, progress, and frustrations using the #AcWriMo hashtag.
Writing is typically a solitary occupation. Even when we are co-authoring, a lot of work is done on our own. And for most of us, the concept of a “book leave” or a sabbatical—undistracted time to focus on our writing—is the stuff of dreams. While we struggle to make sense of our thoughts and interpret research for our readers, life goes on. Dinner needs cooking, partners and kids need attention, and students expect us in class. [Read more…]
Crafting meaningful stories to bring research methods to life
September 19, 2019 By Leave a Comment
Stories engage readers. We can use stories to show how the ideas or strategies we are discussing might play out in a particular social, cultural, or organizational context. I often write about research methods, and find that stories can help readers see how the pieces of a research design fit together. Stories can be presented in a fully-developed research case, or as an engaging example inserted within an article or book chapter.
For my first research book, Online Interviews in Real Time, I thought it was important to include stories. Online methods were new and few robust descriptions were available that showed how they actually worked. I found six researchers who were doing interesting online research, and interviewed them. I crafted a section for each chapter called “Researchers’ Notebook: Stories of Online Inquiry.” Readers could see how each of these researchers handled ethical dilemmas or sampling. The companion website linked to additional materials from the researchers’ work.
Several books later, I am getting ready to write a new edition for Doing Qualitative Research Online and again want to include stories in a “Researchers’ Notebook.” I know that more researchers are incorporating stories, so I wondered whether their lessons learned might help me prepare to move forward. In this post I will share a few tips and examples I discovered in three open access articles. In a future post I will look at digital and visual storytelling and how I can use these approaches in ancillary materials. [Read more…]
Tools for complex collaborations
July 25, 2019 By Leave a Comment
When we collaborate on a writing or editing project with one or two people, we can get away with sharing documents as email attachments. In more complex projects, we might have multiple partners, and each partner could have a significant amount of research and/or writing to contribute. Collaborative partners might have their own teams or student assistants who contribute to the effort. Sharing attachments is no longer the best strategy for exchanging work in progress, so what should we do?
This dilemma is the focus of my questions to Cole Keirsey, who joined me for a presentation, “Managing to Collaborate: Matching Document Management Tools to Your Writing Project,” at the recent TAA conference. As a technical writer for a global company, he used strategies that academic writers can adopt. He answered my questions about document sharing and version control here, and in next month’s post we will look at two other topics from that presentation: distribution and reuse, and deep linking. [Read more…]
6 Steps to organizing for collaborative advantage for writers
July 24, 2019 By Leave a Comment
In her recent TAA webinar, “Mentor, Coach, Supervisor: Collaborative Ways to Work with Writers”, Janet Salmons defined collaboration as “an interactive process that engages two or more individuals or groups who work together to achieve outcomes they could not accomplish independently”. During the session, she shared details about her taxonomy of collaboration and strategies for successful collaboration among academic writers.
In summary of the process for implementing the taxonomy of collaboration and organizing an environment suitable for creating a collaborative advantage for writers, she shared the following six steps. [Read more…]
2019 TAA Council Award Winners
July 15, 2019 By Leave a Comment
During the 2019 TAA Awards Ceremony on June 14th in Philadelphia, PA, in addition to honoring our thirty-one Textbook Award winners, five individuals were honored with TAA Council awards recognizing exemplary contributions to the Association and the authoring community, and two individuals were inducted into the TAA Council of Fellows.
The awards were given by Mike Kennamer, TAA Council President during the ceremony. His remarks on each of the winners and inductees are included below. [Read more…]
Selecting visuals to illustrate your post, article, or book
June 27, 2019 By Leave a Comment
It was great to see many TAA members at the recent conference in Philadelphia! Since not everyone could attend, I’m sharing my presentation about “Enhance Your Writing: How to Design, Select or Create Effective Visuals” in this and future Abstract posts. See the previous post, Figuring it out: Trends for visuals in academic writing. Next month I will write about ways to create original visuals.
Yes, you need visuals! [Read more…]
Figuring it out: Trends for visuals in academic writing
May 16, 2019 By Leave a Comment
Online exchanges are increasingly visual. Even staid newspaper sites now embed media or graphic stories. Almost every mobile device includes a camera, and the means to quickly upload and share still images or media. Graphics and drawing software are readily available. What do these trends mean for academic writing? What kinds of figures or other visual materials are scholars using to communicate about their research? How are electronic journals changing the options for the use of media and images? With these questions in mind, I explored trends and looked examples of visuals in academic writing that extend beyond the typical black and white figure. [Read more…]
