Students expect and need feedback on their work. The basic goal of feedback is to enhance student learning. An anomaly of feedback is that more is not necessarily better. Research tells us that students may not even read your copious feedback (sigh) and may not understand what to do with statements like, “cite more references” or “this is confusing”. However, giving a judicious amount of feedback in a timely manner will make a difference in student learning. The purpose of this article is to describe how to refine, clarify, streamline, and improve your feedback practices with an eye toward spending less time on the task.
Collaborating across differences: Build writing relationships with co-author agreements
I had a conversation with a senior colleague recently about the purpose and value of co-author agreements in collaborative writing projects. He and I talk regularly about research and writing but had not touched on the nature of “agreements” in collaborations. He has built his career in a scientific field where co-authors are the norm, and the majority of his publications included graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, or government agency researchers as collaborators.
Six reminders to help you and your students get to the writing
It’s no secret that writing is hard, whatever our experience, stage, or state. Academics aren’t the only ones who abhor writing. It’s likely that anyone who ever had to write anything abhors writing. With academic writing, as any other kind, it’s usually hard to get started. Even if we’ve had an initial flush of enthusiasm and are amazed at having produced the first few pages, it’s too easy to sink into a frozen torpor.
Yet writing represents some of the most important aspects of our professional work. And too often we avoid, procrastinate, and rationalize why, instead of writing, we must polish the car or clean out the refrigerator.
3 Critical parts to build a lively writing practice
Are you excited about your writing? Do you write daily? Do you feel as though your ideas are clearly written and understood by your readers?
In her presentation on avoiding writing pitfalls, Micki Caskey stressed the importance of building a lively writing practice and shared three critical parts for doing so.
12/9 TAA Webinar – How to Hook Your Audience
In the era of “fake news,” it is critical that research be translated and published as widely and accurately as possible. Among many journalists, however, academics are notorious for their caveats, sub-clauses, and unwillingness to tell a good story. Research experts often find it challenging to engage non-specialist audiences in ways that preserve the rigor and credibility of their work.
Join us Thursday, December 9 from 1-2 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “How to Hook Your Audience”, presented by Erica Machulak, PhD., founder of Hikma Strategies. Erica will offer a framework and actionable strategies to write research narratives that inform and engage non-specialist audiences.
Benefits and drawbacks of remote faculty writing groups
Four faculty members at Sam Houston State University – Elizabeth Lee, Kristina Vargo, Rebecca Wentworth, and William Blackwell – shared the results of their study on the utility of writing groups. The study included a qualitative analysis of faculty members’ participation and perceptions of faculty writing groups and assessed the potential impact of working virtually.
Participants in the study expected a combination of professional and non-professional outcomes from faculty writing groups.