Host Pat Thomson will moderate a discussion on the challenges of setting and meeting academic writing goals. Everyone is welcome to join in with their questions and insights about productivity in academic writing. At this time of year, many writers are trying new approaches and making new resolutions; in this chat, we will consider why those resolutions are so hard to keep. Are we setting unrealistic goals? Are we saying “yes” to too many non-writing activities? Are we trying to find time to write without giving up anything else? Are we sticking with writing approaches that haven’t worked well for us in the past? Are we getting discouraged by the lack of immediate results? Are we assessing our own writing too harshly? One thing that we know often hampers attempts to develop new habits is trying to do it alone. While writing is often a solitary task, we can still gain solace from a community of other writers. The #acwri chats are a way of building that community and creating a space for writers to share their experiences with all facets of academic writing. Please join us on January 22 to be part of this valuable forum. In addition to questions and comments about goal setting, we welcome suggestions for topics for future chats.
To learn more about the history of the #acwri hashtag, read this post from Anna Tarrant. And to learn more about the #AcWriMo hashtag, read this post from Charlotte Frost.
In a previous post for PhD2Published, I mentioned that I would be talking in a symposium at the Society for Research into Higher Education Conference 2012.
I went last Friday (14th December 2012) and really enjoyed the experience. Professor Pat Thomson started with a really interesting talk about her project with Inger Mewburn (aka The Thesis Whisperer) about analyzing blog spaces for academic purposes, followed by Dr Jeremy Segrott who presented our talk about #acwri. Andy Coverdale spoke next about the use of social media and the way in which it aids the research process for PhD students, and then I concluded the session with discussion of how PhD2Published is an empowering space (for me in particular as Managing Editor) and one outside of institutions that is transforming academic knowledge production.
We seemed to get a good response to our papers from a really engaged audience, which was encouraging and we all commented on the strangeness of meeting face-to-face having ‘known’ each other on Twitter for so long (there is proof in the slightly blurred photo in the Storify below!). The symposium was the first real opportunity to meet up directly as a group and to share our experiences and reflections on social media use as academics.
Below is a Storify of some of the Tweets from the day that we Tweeted directly from the symposium to give an idea of what the papers were about and what we discussed:
Tomorrow I have the pleasure of representing PhD2Published at the Society for Research into Higher Education Conference 2012. I am taking part in a symposium organized by Professor Pat Thompson of the Patter blog called ‘Feral spaces? Social media as higher education practice: Blogs, wikis, and twitter feeds with a pedagogical intent’. Pat herself will be talking, as will Andy Coverdale, a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University, UK and Dr Jeremy Segrott, my Acwri partner in crime. In the paper I am presenting, I will talk about the online participatory culture that has been created by feral spaces such as PhD2Published and that is representative of a now well-established online academic movement that is shaping new practices of knowledge production. Being online has created feral spaces like PhD2Published that are borderless and unregulated and that bridge social differences and disciplines. I reflect on this and how this movement is transforming academic knowledge production by creating a community of ‘prosumers’ (or the wonderful academics who write blogs, or share news, knowledge and ideas via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook). I will explore the role of PhD2Published in generating pedagogical content concerned with academic publishing from the perspectives of an expert community of academics of different career stages and will argue that PhD2Published is a unique platform that can be used by its Managing Editors (currently me) to engage in this participatory culture, with the guidance of its founder Charlotte Frost, to reskill and share expertise. I will also reflect on my own involvement with PhD2Published and the way in which it has allowed me to respond to the fast paced, ever-evolving and increasingly competitive academic environment.
I will report on the outcomes of the symposium when I return,
Anna
