“I should be writing…” Balancing research and writing to present and publish with classes, office hours, service requirements, faculty meetings, and a myriad of other responsibilities often makes it difficult for faculty to progress projects as quickly and efficiently as they would like. Works like “How to Write a Lot” from Paul Silva and “Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks (2nd ed): A Guide to Academic Publishing Success” by Wendy Belcher have many suggestions on how to establish and maintain good writing habits. One such habit that frequently appears in the literature is that of the writing group. A writing group can assist the writer with both an accountability framework and a support system.
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) sponsors a controlled, faculty-guided writing group each semester designed to provide faculty the opportunity for focused, structured, supervised writing and collaboration time with like-minded peers. Each participant should expect to make significant progress toward the completion of articles, book chapters, grant applications, and/or other publishable projects. You are a good candidate for participation if you have data collected for your article, book, or study, and now need time, space, accountability, and readers to foster productive writing strategies to complete your writing. Participants must clear their schedules, make a commitment to attend all work sessions for the term, and submit a work plan in advance of the first meeting. The writing group(s) will be interdisciplinary and may contain individuals with different product goals. Participants should plan to have a product (or products) to share before and during scheduled sessions via a Microsoft Team and be prepared to read/comment on/and support others in the group via work in this Team.
In the space of five sessions during the semester, writing group members will engage in a total of approximately 15 intensive hours of research productivity work and advancement. Each session will also include time for individual progress reports and collaborative problem solving via Teams. All sessions will convene virtually in Teams.
Spring 2025
Session dates: 1/31, 2/21, 3/14, 4/4, and 4/25
Session times: all sessions will be open from 10 am until 1 pm
For questions, please email ctl@marshall.edu.