This Twitter chat was dedicated to co-authoring (hosted by @llmunro)

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

FIND INSPIRATION. Look to writers/academics you admire for inspiration. This sounds sappy. I don’t mean put up a poster of an academic superstar and pray to the goddesses of tenure. I mean, look at how their career was built. Find out what their early papers and teaching positions were. Did they write collaboratively a lot at the start before going it alone. What events have been pivotal in firmly establishing them on the map of academia? In short, be a sort of unofficial biographer of someone in academia you hold in high esteem and make sense of some of the steps they took to get where they are. Of course some things happen by chance – right place, right time – and some of it is not what you know but who you know – sadly enough – but you can still learn about strategising your future from their past.

What else does it take to be a Hackademic? Click here to find out!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

HAVE A BIO. Write a concise bio (you might like to take the twitter bio word limit as your guide) and use it across all social media. It’s worth using the same profile picture everywhere too. You can write longer biographies to use for conferences etc but having a nice short one and a good memorable picture mean that people will easily find and remember you online. It’s a little like branding yourself, which sounds icky, but don’t think of it like that. Many of us are really bad at remembering people’s names and faces – let alone now that we live so much of our lives online and don’t always actually meet the person behind the avatar. Help everyone out by always looking and sounding the same online. And when you get to meet people IRL (in real life) who you’ve mostly known only in cyberspace, they’ll recognise you in an instant and feel like they’ve known you for years.

Besides Bio , there some other important tips to be a hackademic. 

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

BE THE BIGGER PERSON. Be receptive to comments and advice on your writing style and content and remember it’s not personal. First, any criticism of your work is just that, criticism of your work, not you. Second, it’s useful. Every bit of feedback you get is information, even if you don’t act on all of it. Try to think about critical comments that seem unduly harsh as badly packaged generosity. It’s better to know as early as possible that your work might be received this way because you can adapt it in advance – depending on whether you agree with their points or not – or steel yourself for possible further criticism. You might also try to think of their input as somehow collaborative. All too often we are urged to see our written work as somehow finished, but really it’s a frozen chunk of an on-going and much more divergent conversation. When someone offers feedback, view your discussion with them as a way of working with them and making the exchange positive for both of you. You might even suggest working on an article together, and learning more about your own work and writing skills through theirs. Or you might go and scream out of an open window and move on because hey, life’s too short!

Maybe this tip can help your hackademic writing as well!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

FIND AN AUDIENCE. Without an audience, you have no real motivation for writing. Your work becomes an exercise in speaking to an empty room, which is – to be fully honest – kinda crazy. So first it is a good idea to really think who you are aiming your work at? Who would you like to speak to and why? And then think about building this audience more literally. For example, students can be an excellent audience for rough pieces of writing and early ideas. Blog posts and conferences are other great platforms for building an audience for your work as you’re writing. Of course you need the writing to really win an audience, but building an audience one step at a time works really well. Then, once you have an audience, the demands of that audience will keep you writing.

Want more tips on Hackademic? Click here!

The #acwri live chat this week focused on the value of Twitter for supporting academic writing. Some of the key Tweets from the discussion can be viewed below but the following briefly summarises the discussions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lot of support for using Twitter to help with academic writing. Those who took part in the chat are established Twitter users and already use the #acwri hashtag to discuss writing. However the reasons why Twitter is considered useful were more varied and may even persuade the novice Twitter user to give it a try. People like that it can be used to link to informative resources (such as blogs), that it challenges them to write concisely and to break down key messages. They also like that it is accessible and facilitates a network of individuals from diverse backgrounds, all who share an interest in academic writing. They also think that it helps to improve their other forms of academic writing.

There was also a critical discussion about the value of Twitter for academic writing. Some discussed lacking confidence in Tweeting opinions and points and felt that being accountable was important. Others discussed the challenges of negotiating and presenting identity through Tweeting. It was felt that disagreeing with people’s points was more difficult. It is much easier to agree with others through this medium, possibly limiting debate.

Finally, not included here, was a discussion about how the use of social media continues to be blamed for the poor writing styles and writing abilities of students. A summary of this discussion will be posted soon.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

VALUE NON-ACADEMIC FRIENDSHIPS. Your non-academic friends are the ones who will most help you to forget the horrors of academic life. When all is said and done (and footnoted) the people you’ll crave are the ones who won’t ask you about tenure, your next book or your latest student feedback. They won’t ask you to serve on a committee, write a recommendation letter or peer review an entire manuscript. Nope, the people worth their weight in gold are the ones who hand you a beer and ask you if you saw the latest game. Or they’re the ones who watch bad television with you without asking for a critique of the use of stock characters. And they’re probably the ones who will be proud of you no matter what. Just try to be as good a friend to them as they are to you – for example, correcting grammar and pronunciation are not considered generous acts outside the academy!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

SHARE. Pay it forward by sharing your own writing and publishing experiences. Over the last few years, academics at all stages of their careers have been able to network more and more widely using new digital communication technologies and social media. This work is not only useful but necessary. Frankly, there is still too much gate-keeping and secrecy in academia, so the more transparent we all are about our processes the better. As educators, it really is our job to foster the growth of others. If you help someone else get published, that is a career-success for you too.

What else does it takes to be a hackademic ? Click here to find out.

(C) Google

Today’s post by +Daniel Spielmann invites you to find out if Google+ could be a useful addition to your Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and provides some tips to get you started. Daniel is a PhD student at the University of Hamburg, Germany, focussing on the use of ePortfolio in the training of peer writing tutors. He is interested in academic writing and digital literacies and in the connection of both.

It is November, the month of #acwrimo and #digiwrimo. Many academics engage in digital writing using Twitter and writing personal blogs but in this post I explain why I am one of a growing number of Google+ users and why I think, for many academics, it is worth checking out, especially if you haven’t given it a try yet.

What is G+ and why is it different to Twitter?

“Personally, I love G+ because people I’m connecting with here help me be ‘who I want to be’ – and faster than I could possibly do on my own.” (+Meri Walker)

On Sept. 20th I took part in the PhD2published Twitter live chat on academic tweeting where I mentioned some of the issues I have with Twitter and compared it to Google+. Some of you may not have heard of G+ or even realize its potential for academic writing and networking.

Well, G+ offers a set of joint services which foster interaction. You can share text messages and comments which – different to Twitter – are not restricted to 140 characters, which allows for a much more natural flow of communication; however, some people interpret the character limit on Twitter as beneficial, because it supposedly forces you to be very precise about your message. For me, that’s not enough. Sometimes there is a fine line between “concise” and “truncated”. Is everything exceeding 140 characters just “intellectual ‘baggage'” as @markhawker / +Mark Hawker tweeted with a smile during the aforementioned chat, or is it rather that not until we cross restrictions like the one imposed on us on Twitter that research and academia become most interesting? How important is the 140 character limit to you?

Another G+ property is that discussions are easier to keep track of, because they are not all over the place as they are on Twitter; following longer discussions is much more convenient and, in fact, from a user perspective the platform seems far more conducive to focussed discussion, rendering it a solid tool for academic exchange.

The observations mentioned – the absence of a character limit and the more traceable organization of conversations – may contribute to the fact that communication on G+ is often perceived as more lively and yielding than on other networks (although you can cross-post from G+ to Twitter, you should keep in mind the two different types of network you are feeding, see also d) below).

When you share pictures or videos on G+ your readers will see them directly in their stream, not just a link to them. Links are not subtracted from your character limit because there is none. Sharing and linking are therefore much more fun, which makes me think G+ is also of great service to the practical application of the “Power Law of Participation” in which Mayfield describes the stages that lead us from a collective intelligence to a collaborative one.

Furthermore, with G+ Hangouts real time video conferences with up to ten people are as easy as pie. The integration of Google Drive (and other Google services, for that matter) allows you to work with others on the same document while ‘hanging out’, which makes it a great tool for collaborative digital text creation as in online writing groups or multi-author writing projects, for example. How can we harvest this potential for #acwrimo and the time after?

Here are some tips to get you started on G+:

a) Build your personal profile. Ask yourself: Why are you on G+ and what do you hope to gain from it? What people do you want to get in touch with and what should they know about you? Fill your profile with information about what you do and what your interests are, don’t leave it blank.

b) Simple but effective: Use the G+ search box to find people and content that match your professional interests. Be creative about search terms, explore.

c) Think about circle management. On G+ you group people you follow into different circles. The circle feature allows you to be very specific about what information you share with whom and it is also very helpful in improving the quality of your G+ stream. Circles will need some time to get used to, but once you discover the potential, you’ll surely get the hang of it. This video helps you get started with circles. I also shared two posts on G+ (1, 2) to help your thinking about circles.

c) Don’t just share any content, share interesting content that fits the professional profile you aim to create of yourself.

d) Don’t just share and be done with it – when try to give it a personal touch by commenting / giving your opinion on what you are sharing. Your readers wonder: What do you think about what you are sharing? Letting people know gives you a much bigger chance of inspiring feedback. Including your personal opinion in your share will also help you to tie your thoughts together when you browse your own stream a few months down the line.

e) Make your postings interesting, show you care about others’ opinions, ask questions.

f) Improve your posts’ readability through structure and use the formatting options in G+: a “_” in front and at the end of a line of text will set everything in between in italics, “*” gives you boldface and “-” strikethrough.

g) You can mention other plussers by typing “+” followed by the name of the plusser you want to refer to. That way, this person will be notified that he or she has been mentioned.

h) Interact with people on their posts, say thanks, leave comments. G+ is not about reading, it’s about interacting. Be positive and inspiring.

It works, if you let it.

Now, after about 16 months with G+, I honestly believe something would be missing if the service were gone for good. Every time I look at my stream, I learn. G+ is what I recommend to social media reluctant colleagues who show the willingness to try at least one single network. It would also have been the ideal tool to have used two years ago when I taught a core seminar on autonomous learning. I promoted the use of Google Wave instead which did serve a purpose pre-G+.

As with any other social network, you have to be active if you want to be able to judge the benefits. No matter if we are talking Facebook, Twitter or G+, you have to engage with others in order to build a network that reliably supplies you with meaningful information. For me, G+ does that in a less stressful manner than other networks. And as with any other network, engagement takes some time; trust is not built in a day. So if you want to give it a try, be serious about it, because the bottom line is: You yourself decide what you get to see in your stream – valuable information or just the ordinary distractions.

For some examples on how G+ connects people, have a look at this posting by +Andrew Baron with lots of thoughts about the use of G+ or  +Melony Ritter inviting support for her 1st grade class learning about geography. If you are a speaker of German, +Stephanie Dreyfuerst’s post could be a good place to post your first G+-comment. Or why not add a G+ post about #acwrimo yourself? What differences do you encounter when sharing your #acwrimo word counts, excerpts, writing prompts, habits, projects, feedback and motivation on G+? What are possible G+ benefits for #acwrimo? Just use the Twitter hashtag in your G+ postings and let’s get the discussions going. The opportunities for interaction on G+ are certainly there for the taking!

Today’s post is about writing for non academic audiences. Marcia Hughes, the post author is one of the founders of the Boulder Group Ltd, a communications consultancy founded in 2007, dedicated to working with universities and higher educational institutions in the delivery of knowledge to wider audiences.

If you’re passionate about communicating your research with as wide a public as possible, then the chances are you’re already presenting your ideas clearly and simply to diverse audiences outside of academic walls. Hopefully, you’re also benefiting from your public engagement.

As a journalist and reporter with the BBC for nearly 15 years, I had to ensure my ideas ‘educated, informed and entertained’ the public. I found it rewarding making programmes for a general audience to absorb and appreciate.  Working mainly for Business and Financial News and Current Affairs, I had to turn quite complex issues into accessible listening and viewing for TV and Radio. I quickly learnt some important steps for engaging a general audience:

• Developing a clear and simple narrative for the audience to follow
• Choosing interesting case studies (voices) with relevant human interest or experiences
• Making sure interviews with experts outlined key themes in a straightforward way
• Removing any jargon or specialist speak
• Using simple and concise language and using short sentences

Of course, it wasn’t always plain sailing. At times, appealing to this unknown “general audience” felt like being in the firing line from a group of people with the same “Am I bothered?” attitude as the infamous teenage girl played by Catherine Tate. Reaching out to the world beyond my like-minded BBC peers and financial experts took me out of my comfort zone. It constantly challenged me to think more simply and develop a much more open mindset every time I thought of a new programme idea:  Why am I making this programme; Who am I really trying to reach? What do I want to say?

These questions centre on two key areas: Audiences and Messages. They are as important and relevant to an academic individual writing for ‘non-academics’ as they are to a journalist.  What are the potential audiences are out there for you? What are their needs? What are their interests and values?  What are your key messages? Why does your research matter to them?

The more you ask yourself these sorts of questions, the sharper your focus. The more straightforward your communication, the more likely your research will resonate with a non- academic audience.

At the Boulder Group Ltd we are committed to supporting individual researchers, academic professionals, and post-graduates in their communication with the wider world. Our founding belief is that the knowledge created in our universities and HEIs, and the great ideas of researchers deserve a much bigger audience and greater appreciation.

Our service Researcher AM focuses on Audiences and Messages. It gives one-to-one help in audience engagement and current thinking on public engagement in order to help you define your research’s key audiences and choose the most appropriate means of communicating with that audience.

Contact Marcia: marcia@bouldergroup.co.uk

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

BE SLOW TO REACT. Remember that you’re not responsible for how someone else chooses to interpret your work, only for how you choose to react to them. It’s very easy to get all worked up when people misunderstand you and/or launch into unjustifiable criticism. Online this is sometimes the work of so-called ‘internet trolls’, people who are just hell bent on endlessly playing devil’s advocate or arguing for the sake of arguing. Sometimes you are talking at cross-purposes and though you might find common ground in a face-to-face discussion, it may utterly elude you online. In these instances it’s best not to react or at least to take a bit of time to ponder your response. If someone is trying to get your goat they’ll continue to get it no matter what, so save your energy for something more worthwhile. Similarly, the old adage about today’s news being tomorrow’s fish and chip wrap holds an even faster truth online – although there it might be tomorrow’s LOLcat. And also, quite unlike an in-person argument, if you do think of the perfect answer days later, you’ll still be able to use it.

Want more tips on Hackademic? Click here!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

GO SHOPPING. For some people, buying clothes is a powerful way to de-stress and release endorphins. That’s great, but not true for everyone. For some, buying clothes is stressful. But here’s the problem, you’re going to need some clothes and, in fact, if you’re going to be a success, you’re probably going to need some new clothes. There are two main times academics need to look smart, one is at conferences and the other is at job interviews. What we’re suggesting here is that you buy these sorts of clothes well in advance of either of these events and have them ready and waiting. When you’re writing your job talk for your campus interview the last thing you need is to have to rush around finding a couple of suitable outfits. But if you go out shopping with a clear head – and perhaps a good friend – it can be one less thing to think about when you should be writing. Perhaps you should  go shopping with your team ?

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES WISELY. We’re principled beings us academics and biting your tongue every time you feel something is wrong or unjust is going to get painful. We don’t want you to shy away from a fight that is important to you. Actually, we’re hugely in favor of fighting for what you believe in. We just want you to recognise which battles are the most important. If you argue over everything, you’re going to get a reputation for being difficult. If you pick a fight carefully, your colleagues will be more likely to listen (and respond well) because it’ll be clear to them that this really is an important issue for you. Besides, a lot is built on bright “hellos” and coffee runs. Very little is gained by making enemies. If you fall out with someone, even if you don’t agree with them or are having an all-out personality clash, try your hardest to create a convivial working relationship. If you make an enemy, not only can it jeopardize your career growth (they might sit on a panel deciding your fate some day) but you’ll make your work day a lot less pleasant.

Want more tips on Hackademic? Click here!

Dr Tseen-Ling Khoo blogs regularly for the Research Whisperer and is currently Senior Advisor in Research Grant Development at RMIT University. Prior to joining RMIT, Tseen completed research fellowships at Monash University (2004-2010) and the University of Queensland (2001-2004). She also convenes the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (asianaustralianstudies.org; 160 members), and was editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies (Routledge; ERA A-ranked) which she reflects on in today’s post. 

There is no better way to fast-track your grasp of academic productivity and evaluation than becoming a journal editor.

A stint as an editor for a collection of essays in a book or the role of a guest-editor for a journal will give you taste of what it’s like, but nothing can prepare you for being an ongoing journal editor.

It’s not for everyone, and its rewards can be great.

What makes a good editor?

The qualities a good editor needs are:

• The ability to make fast, good decisions about papers or issue proposals.
• Thoroughness with processes and around reviews and revisions.
• Good academic network, or the potential to grow one.
• Tenacity about doing the job well, even though it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t often get concrete rewards. It’s also the kind of role where the recognition you might get never reflects the amount of time you’ve put into it.

Given this somewhat daunting list that nudges close to martyrdom, why would you do it?

1. Being an editor of a good journal repays you with prestige points, and you get to list it on your CV as an ‘esteem factor’.
   With your name on the mast-head of every issue and on the publication’s website, it also helps with getting your name out there consistently.
2. You get to grow a field in your own image. Sort of.
   With journals that cover more specific topic areas, you can often manage the content such that areas you feel are neglected get more love or, if you feel they’re overrepresented (over-saturated), these topics get ‘rested’. You can tap promising early scholars to submit and have your journal associated with their probable rise through the ranks.
3. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to work with a good, tight editorial team.
   In my experience, if you couldn’t work well with your editorial team colleagues, life as a journal editor would be hellish. I was lucky enough to have a team with whom I loved working and could have a laugh. We also had a publisher who treated us to 3-course lunches once a year. This helped.

That’s all very well, and what many academic mentors may tell you, but here’s why I say you should do it:

1. Being a journal editor gives you a crash course in high level, on-the-job professionalism.
   You think you have editing expertise? It’s not until you are editing a constant stream of papers, revisions, and whole special issues that you appreciate what ‘being an editor’ means.a) You get an intimate perspective on how your own work may travel through a journal’s processesand start to realise the profoundly unpredictable input and schedule that’s involved in just one paper’s review. The editing skills you pick up as a journal editor feedback, of course, into the quality of your own writing and how you may pitch proposals to journals or editors in the future. You will necessarily have picked up on what kinds of things slow or expedite work through the academic journal system.b) You realise what the time pressures really are in producing publications. I had always thought I was a fairly organised and efficient worker, but it wasn’t until I became a regular editor of publications that I realised I had a shallow idea of the intricate juggling process that gets a book or journal from go to woe. If you’re lucky, you’ll have an associate/assistant editor who also works on the journal and they may well take responsibility for the lion’s share of the proofing and stylistic aspects (all hail associate editors, I say!). Still, ensuring that the publication is consistent, each piece as intellectually exciting as possible, and any glitches are addressed and accounted for (with authors and publishers) is gruelling. As a guest-editor, it’s bad enough; for an ongoing editor, multiply this by at least four.

2. You get to see the seedy and noble sides of your colleagues.
   It would only really make sense to take up big editorial duties with a journal if the publication was in your area and fed your critical and professional knowledge. When I say “professional knowledge”, I’m not referring here to the process of editing per se; I’m talking about how you get to know the academics in your discipline. Chances are, they’re your reviewers and contributors. How do they assess their peers or deal with criticism of their own work? As I’ve written about in more detail elsewhere, you can tell a LOT about your colleagues through how they review (and are reviewed). This kind of information pays dividends immediately in your broader academic life and ‘insider’ knowledge about the personalities at play in a given field.

For me, having been an editor in various capacities (including five years at the helm of a rapidly growing quarterly journal), the experience and insight I’ve gained is invaluable.

No doubt, the time that the editing gigs took up could have been channelled into a few more papers and chapters on my CV. But there is no way I would have known as much about the academic game, or as many players in that game, as I do now.

Do you have a Twitter account? Are you interested in all things academic writing? Have you got any questions or concerns about your academic writing that you want some advice about? If any, or all of these questions apply to you why not take a look at the #acwri hashtag on Twitter? Making great use of the tag is a burgeoning community of writers all discussing their writing goals and ambitions, trails and tribulations. You can get great advice from individuals at all career stages about academic writing and really benefit from sharing your own experiences. To find out more about the #acwri initiative take a look at our Live Chat page.

As part of #acwri we also run a fortnightly live chat and the next one is taking place on Twitter this Thursday, 20th September, at 8pm UK time. Please do come along and take part. We like to ensure that the #acwri community has some say in what we discuss and you can now vote for your preferred topic in the Tweet Poll below. The topic that receives the most votes will be the one we discuss on Thursday.

If you can’t make it to the chat don’t despair! We also write a summary of each chat that is posted to this site so you can still benefit from the collective learning. You can check out previous chats now in the Live Chat tab Archive.

Hope to see/meet you soon!