Write@UNG

Friday, January 24, 2025

noon - 1 p.m.

Writing About Your Teaching

Every time you step into a classroom, you are stepping into a research moment. You try new assignments, activities, and textbooks. You adapt to new population of students, new course schedules, and new course deliveries. In this Friday Writing Session, we will draw from Mick Healey, Kelley Matthews, and Alison Cook-Sather’s Writing About Teaching and Learning in Higher Education to frame our conversation. We will imagine (and then plan out!) how your teaching experiences might be the seeds of a future journal article, book chapter, or conference presentation. Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Open Access Book.

Framing a Literature Review

Editors and reviewers often outright reject submissions because of “fit.” What does that mean and how do you make sure your submission “fits”? This term often points to a writer struggling to situate their work properly. Before writers get to what they want to say, writers need to ground their work in what others have said. In this Friday Writing Session, we will talk literature reviews: how to brainstorm them, draft them, refine them, and where to locate them in your writing. By looking at specific examples from a variety of disciplines, we will leave with a clearer sense of what you might need to accomplish to land an acceptance!

Responding to Reviewer Feedback

Oh, that anonymous feedback! If you want to publish academic writing, you will receive this kind of feedback. Someone, somewhere, read your writing and drafted feedback to you: what worked and what didn’t. Now, you are faced with responding to the editors about what you will revise according to this feedback. Be heartened! Revise and resubmit is a good first step toward publication. In this Friday Writing Session, we will use Wendy Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks to talk about how to read feedback, organize a revision plan, and draft a revision memo.

Friday, January 19, 2024

noon - 1:00 p.m.

Saying What Others Have Said, So You Can Say What You Want to Say: Writing a Literature Review

One of the more popular college writing textbooks is called “They Say / I Say.” The premise of this book is that all writers, from first-year students to full professors, ground their arguments in current arguments. No one writes in a vacuum. Academics use the phrase “literature review” to capture the “They Say” part of arguments. But while many of us know what a literature is supposed to do, actually writing a literature review is one of the more challenging parts of academic writing. This presentation covers common moves inherent in literature reviews across various disciplines. By pointing to examples and breaking apart these examples, participants arrive at a stronger sense of how to build an effective literature review.

Making Good First Impressions: Writing a Title and Abstract

Admit it, you rarely read past the title and abstract when digging into the last academic journal in your field, right? Of course! You are busy and looking for material that connects with your teaching, your current research project, your current conference presentation you are putting together. We lean heavily on titles and abstracts as readers, but we also know, as writers, how challenging they can be to put together. This interactive presentation draws on titles from a variety of academic disciplines to offer basic principles that make for effective titles. The presentation then breaks down a selection of abstract, so participants leave with potential titles for their writing and the building blocks of abstracts.

Summer Days Don’t Have to Mean Summer Daze: Channeling Energy into Summer Writing Projects

With summer coming soon, many academics are mentally building writing schedules to fill lazy summer days. But when June rolls around, we find ourselves staring aimlessly at a blinking cursor or hiding from our writing projects behind Netflix shows and pool time. This interactive presentation guides participants through several methods to build and sustain a productive summer writing schedule while still making time for important rest.

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

9 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Moving Forward with Your Writing Project

Bio: Nancy Chick is a SoTL scholar, scholarly teacher, and faculty developer at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In addition to an extensive editing background in both journals and books, she has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters on the results of SoTL projects and on the field of SoTL itself.

*It is facilitated by CTLL and hosted by Dr. Nancy Chick.

Monday, May 9, 2022
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Zoom

Establishing Scholarly Productivity at a Teaching-Intensive University

This workshop will focus on practical strategies faculty members can use with teaching-intensive workloads, particularly in the age of COVID. An emphasis will be given on effective project management, writing techniques, and tools that can assist busy faculty writers. 

Dr. Christine Tulley

Christine Tulley is a Professor of English and Founder and Director of the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing at The University of Findlay. As the campus Academic Development Coordinator, she runs faculty writing groups and offers tenure and promotion application support including effective practices for writing with heavy teaching and service loads.

She is the author of How Writing Faculty Write (2018), the forthcoming Rhet Comp Moms: What 100 Time Use Diaries Can Teach Us About Parenting, Productivity, and Professionalism (Utah State University Press), and contributes regularly to Inside Higher Education on faculty productivity issues. 

Tuesday, May 10, 2022
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Zoom

Co-Authoring STEM Related Publications

This workshop is designed for faculty who wish to advance knowledge about student learning and the success of teaching methods. Whether you are new to conducting and publishing education research or not, we will help refine and focus a research question, identify variables and convincing sources of evidence, select appropriate methods and publication venues, and organize the next steps in enacting your research plan.

Dr. Marguerite "Peggy" Brickman 

Peggy Brickman is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology whose contributions to teaching have been recognized at the local and national level. Brickman received her Ph.D. in Genetics from U.C. Berkeley, but in her position as a Professor of Biology Education, she has become a driving force for the scholarship of teaching and learning at UGA, where her research and scholarship focus on new methods of teaching introductory biology. Over 25,000 students since 1996 smile when they think of biology thanks to the enthusiasm and comedic gifts Brickman has brought to the classroom.

Wednesday, May 11, 2022
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Zoom

Finding The Next Thing I Need to Do…and Then the Next Thing After That and Then…

We’ll reflect on where your project was when you began these three days, where it is now, and what the next things are that you need to keep going. We’ll ask: What might keep you from completing this project and what would help you finish it?

Dr. Anne Ellen Geller

Anne Ellen Geller is a Professor of English at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. She teaches undergraduate and graduate English courses. From 2007-2018 she was Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and from 2018-2021 she was Director of Writing Across Communities. In both these roles she supported St. John’s faculty writers.

She is the co-editor of Working With Faculty Writers (Utah State University Press 2013). She is one of the three co-researchers of The Meaningful Writing Project and co-author of The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education (Utah State University Press 2016) and Teaching Meaningful Writing (under contract with West Virginia University Press).

Writing About Your Teaching

Whenever you step into a classroom, you are stepping into a research moment. Instructors try new assignments, activities, and textbooks. Instructors adapt to new population of students, new course schedules, and new course deliveries. In this Friday Writing Session, we will draw from Mick Healey, Kelley Matthews, and Alison Cook-Sather’s Writing About Teaching and Learning in Higher Education to frame our conversation. We will imagine (and then plan out!) how your teaching experiences might be the seeds of a future journal article, book chapter, or conference presentation.  

Framing a Literature Review

Many journal articles and conference presentations are outright rejected because of “fit.” This somewhat vague term often points to a writer not situating their unique contribution in literature of interest to the journal or conference. Before writers get to what they want to say, writers need to ground their work in what others have said. We will talk literature reviews in this Friday Writing Session: how to brainstorm them, draft them, refine them, and where to locate them in your writing. By looking at specific examples from a variety of disciplines, we will leave with a clearer sense of what you might need to accomplish to land an acceptance!

Methods, Methodology (and IRB)

Remember when you drove to a new place and wrote down directions so as to not get lost? Our methods and methodologies are like hand-written directions, preparing us for our drive through our research and directing us to a clear destination. In other words, the method we choose and the methodology that guides our selection of method is foundational to an academic argument—no matter if you are an art historian or an organic chemist. In this Friday Writing Session, we will gather and talk through qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research design and look to John Creswell’s Research Design to guide our time together. And, of course, we will talk a little about the Institutional Review Board, which oversees human subject research! 

Friday, December 3, 2021
12 p.m. – 1 p.m.

Responding to Reviewer Feedback

The anonymous feedback! If you want to publish academic writing, you will receive this kind of feedback. Someone, somewhere, read your writing and drafted feedback to you: what works, what didn’t. Now the editors are asking that you revise accordingly. Be heartened! Revise and resubmit is a good first step toward publication. In this Friday Writing Session, we will use Wendy Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks to focus our talk on responding to feedback. We will specifically talk about how to read feedback, organize a revision plan, and draft a revision memo.