They also have what they call the Writing Show Reality Shows in which writers complete a kind of audio diary.  Again not for everyone, but there may be something here for you.

If anyone does puruse this I’d be interested in any comments you have.  Please post them below

Kenny

There is an article in the Educause Review New Horizons column on the ‘Persistence of Writing’ by Thomas Burkdall. Burkdall is an Associate Professor in English Writing and the Director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

In this article he argues for retaining writing and reading as a key part of the higher education of students.  He rings the alarm bells at the pronouncements of prominent technological and media moguls who have delcared the death of reading.  Even a major annual national conference in the US on writing composition had a major workshop on the assessment of multimedia assignments.  He quotes Jonathan Swift, Marcel Proust and Mark Twain amongst others on the importance of reading and writing to understanding and learning.

He argues that it is central to our processes learning and understanding that we read and write.  For many this is a solitary task.  However, he points out that even multi-media assignments require writing in the preparation.  You cannot develop a good voice-over for a short film or presentation without developing a script or written presentation first.  The writing style is different and the audience is different, but these are writing skills that may develop improved writing abilities in students.

What light does this discussion shed for academic writers?  I think it reminds us about the fact that although for some we may not be as experienced in writing for peer-reviewed academic journals, there are other examples of writing we do as part of our academic practice.  This was an issue which came up in an earlier port on Writing as Academic Practice. Some ephemeral writing, such as papers for presentation, or keynote lectures we may have done demonstrate that we ahve acquired skills in writing that are well developed and well-used.  Writing for peer reviewed journals or for publications si just writing for another audience.

It asks a fundamental question.  One on which the jury is still out.  What will theplace of writing be for academics in the future?  If we write peer reviewd journal articles, who will read them?  In period of economic austerity, I suspect university libraries are looking at their lists of journal subscriptions – many of which have just been thorugh a period of higher than average price inflation – and considering cutting them.  This will restrict the readership of many of the journals.  We are also moving more and more to online publication.  It is some time (possibly more than three years) since I went to a library to pick up a print copy of a journal.  What does this mean for hte future of publication if more and more journals are going to be read online?

Thomas Burkdall argues in favour of defending writing in our higher education curricula, suggesting that predictions of the death of writing may be premature.  Hoewever, other evidence, for example from the National Literacy Trust suggests that the death of reading is not so clear.  for example they reported slight increases in the number of children (both boys and girls).  They report different motivations for reading and they report declingin involvement of parents in reading with children for pleasure.  So the forms of reading and writing that we and our students are doing and may be changing.  Perhaps the truth is more accurately expressed in this way: reading and writing is dead; long live reading and writing

The Chase Hotel

Writing Retreat venue for the Writing Project 2009 Retreat.

The two intensive writing days (with a stay overnight) will take place in a setting away (and at a distance) from the University.

The aim is to encourage an intense community experience focused around your writing, that builds on the work you have begun.  This also provides the opportunity for social activities and the development of the broader writing community with an ethos of peer support.  It is the main occasion when the groups from Oxford Brookes University and the University of Gloucestershire will be able to spend time together face-to-face.

The dates for the ‘Writing Retreat’ part of the project are 22nd/23rd June (Monday & Tuesday) and in 2009 this will take place in The Chase Hotel, Ross-on-Wye.

As you will be already aware, transport will be available from FCH campus in Cheltenham to and from the Hotel, if you have booked.  For Satellite navigation users, the postcode is: HR9 5LH.  Here’s a link to a map.

The Chase conference facilities

Participants on the Writing Retreat this year must be able to participate for the full two days.  We will leave around 08.30 from FCH on the Monday, expecting to arrive at the hotel around 09.30am and return around 6pm on the Tuesday.  The journey time should be just under an hour.  More details will be provided nearer the time.  The journey time from Oxford is around 1 hour 45 minutes.  If you are traveling under your own steam, please aim to arrive for around 09.30am.  We would hope to be finished on the Tuesday by 4.30pm.

PRSI will supply basic stationery (pens, paper, post-its, flipchart paper and pens), and printing facilities. If you need anything else, please e-mail us.

blog wordle

Wordle removes the small linking words that are repeated and do not change the sense of a piece of text too much.  This then allows you to focus on the key words conveying meaning.  The more a word is repeated the larger it appears on the image.  If you try it you can adapt the text, play about a little with the colour schemes and the text orientation.

The analysis is very simple and certainly doesn’t provide a substitute for full content analysis, but for a quick analysis. It is really interesting to see which words I have emphasised in the writing.  I just tried this with a postgrad student research proposal and one of the interesting things that has come out of it is the number of times the text contained the words ‘may’ and ‘hope’.  It immediately indicated to me that the paper needed to be expressed more positively.  Are there any other quick text analysis application like this that you can recommend?

Here’s one other I have used:

http://textalyser.net/

This one provides an analysis of some common text analysis statistics, such as wordcounts of total words, unique words, complexity (lexical density), readability (‘fog’ index), top words and phrases.  This can give a good indication of how good a piece of writing is and can be useful indicator of your style and how clear it is.

I wouldn’t use this kind of thing every time you write (I certainly don’t), but it may be worth putting a couple of pieces of your writing through this analysis to see if there are any patterns that can be improved or change appropriately.  I have done this and it can be quite instructive!

What do you think?  Is this of any use or is this simply over-analysing your writing and making the process of writing painful?!  Can you suggest alternative tools (not necessarily online) that could be used to analyse and improve writing?

Now to try out another application … Please respond to the poll about Wordl below.
View This Poll

Thanks!

Kenny

Endnote

I think this was a really useful meeting.  One of the things we did was to have a training session on Endnote from one of our Learning Centre colleagues towards the end of our meeting.  Once we got everyone back together in the room for this (via a coffee stop in the refectory for some!), I found this to be a  really useful session.

I did Endnote training about 5 years ago when I was at Kingston when they were about to introduce Endnote insitution-wide.  Shortly after the session  it transpired that until full deployment, each individual had to get their department to pay for the individual license costs and although it wasn’t much our HoD turned down my request for it and I never got around to ordering it for myself.  In the meantime as a Firefox user (that’s a web browser alternative to Internet Explorer), I discovered the Zotero Add-on which is in the browser and automatically downloads exported reference details from most sites to a database and can embed these in Word and other documents, which is pretty much what Endnote seemed to offer.  There is a video on their site that explains how it works.  I hav been using this for storing my references, but not in a particularly organised way.

However, both University of Gloucestershire and Brookes have Endnote licences.  Here is the Gloucestershire Endnote Page and here is the Brookes Endnote Page.  As you will see, you can search online databases from within Endnote itself and select entries that you want to save to your Endnote library.  The process of establishing an Endnote menu within your Word version so you can then link your Endnote Library to documents and papers is so easy and quick we almost missed it in our training session!

'La caverne aux livres' by gadl on flickr

You can order Endnote if at Gloucestershire, simply by logging your request with the ICT Helpdesk (by phone or website).  I requested Endnote to be installed yesterday and before the end of the day received a note to say that it would be installed next time I log in to my desktop PC.  Members of other institutions should contact their equivalent service for details.

At UoG you can purchase your own copy for home use for £66.  This is available through Adept Scientific and by selecting the Athens login and by following the on-screen information.  But Endnote Web is also freely available and does much the same as the desktop version including the ‘Cite while you write’ function that allows you to insert citations which automatically adds the details to your reference list – albeit a little more slowly (depending on connection).

It does take a bit of work to maintain your database, but I think the pay-off is trouble-free citation management.  If (heaven forbid!) at a late stage in the writing process, your co-author says: “I think we might have a better chance submitting it to the Journal of $*£^@ (using the Chicago system) as opposed to the International Annals of $%*@ (using the Harvard system)” You can smile and offer to take on changing the citations format, knowing that because you have Endnote and because you have kept up with maintaining your library, it can be done with a couple of clicks!

Incidentally, I stumbled across these Endnote video tutorials on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFGLS1c10L0

These are provided by Endnote themselves.  There are a total of 32 videos available from the Endnote YouTube Channel.  These are available in normal and HQ versions, which makes a big difference if you prefer to watch in full-screen mode.

I hope this information is of use.  Is Endnote something you would use?  If you already use it, would you recommend it to colleagues and why?

Kenny

Table of contents

David Canter and Gavin Fairbairn provide an interesting discussion of how to become an academic author tackling a range of aspects of the process, with the case studies of various academic authors explaining their perspectives and experiences.  There is a lot of useful context here, with strategies, tips and tricks not only from the authors but from their very diverse range of respondents.  This is an informative book.  The voice of the academic authors come through – not just the ones that wrote this book.  Maybe you recognise your own situation in those articulated by the case study writers?

If you have read this, did you find it useful?  Would you rather have a book that instructed you (a how-to book) or one that gave various views of existing academic authors (providing a variety of approaches that you may be able to learn from)?  Do you need strategy or tips to get your writing to be more efficient and productive?

UoG OPAC Catalogue entry for Canter & Fairbairn

Brookes OPAC Catalogue entry for Canter & Fairbairn

Kenny

In this video clip he talks about the experience of fear he has in connection with his writing activity. He is talking about the act of deconstructing the thinking of others and the fear he has of how they perceive him.  He discusses how this affects his feelings about writing and how the fear of rejection affects how he feels.

Derrida had his critics – not least about his style of writing – but Derrida is still considered one of the most influential academic writers and thinkers of our time. However, having said this, I recognise some of the feelings that he describes surrounding writing.  The fear of criticising others who may be respected, the fear of what people will think of what I write, the fear of rejection.  Now, I think you can take this one of two ways:

1. He is such a well-published writer that his description doesn’t really apply, or
2. If he feels like that and can publish as much as he does then there’s hope for me.

I prefer to take the second approach. Well I would, wouldn’t I?  I think that although he struggles with his fears, he has found a way of managing them.  Although he has published lots (a book a year from 1972), he starts his statement with the phrase: ‘Each time that I write something …’ So this thinking affects him even when he was talking at a late stage in his career.  The more he published, in other words, the feelings did not go away.

He seems to have separated out his his feelings or his ‘fears’ – his ‘vigilance’ as he also calls it – from his writing.  So when he is writing he doesn’t feel this ways, but after he has written, as he is half asleep at night, he has the feelings.  As he goes to sleep, his fears awake.  It is interesting that he says when he is awake and working he does what must be done.

Have you had this experience or similar?  Is it something that prevents you from writing or from making you hesitant to write?  Or do you think that the best approach is to write and then deal with the consequences as he seems to?  Are there strategies for managing ‘fears’ or for compartmentalising concerns about writing?  Do you need to separate out fears from work or is ‘vigilance’ important to your writing?

Kenny

Chapter 4 of this guide is How to Get Research Articles Published in Professional Journals This chapter provides useful practical advice for first-time authors and useful reminders for experienced writers.  The main emphasis is on education and psychology, but the tips are relevant for many disciplines.  It is not detailed and most of the advice is on the practical end of the spectrum – how to structure a paper, what to put in the covering letter to the editor, etc.  But this is useful if you are sittign with a set of notes and a blank screen – and it is available online therefore easily accessible.

Reading this side by side with the publications of the likes of Rowena Murray, raises the question of which type of ‘How-to’ book is most useful to you.  Which kind do you find  the one that builds confidence and encourages free-writing or the one that gives advice on paper structure and ocvering letter?  Maybe both have their place?

contents page as a pdf

sample chapter: Chapter 3; Why not Publish?

In this book Abby Day has produced a very useful manual that provides considerable detailed information on publishing.  This provides you with information from the start, including basic reference material, which will be useful for beginners, as well as tips and strategies for developing writing skills for academic publishing if you already have some experience.

She also wrote Winning Research Funding published in 2003, which may be of related interest.

UoG OPAC catalogue entry for Day (2007)

Has anyone else used this book?  What do you think?