It's going to be all write

Let's face it, not every University program applies written assignments to the same degree...until the final thesis.

One challenge students face is that their writing skills remain underdeveloped as they approach their final thesis, and even Ph.Ds can enter their program with limited experience with academic and scientific writing. Some programs do not require much, or any writing, leaving students to 'fend for themselves' by the time their thesis deadline approaches.

On the other side, being a Professor isn't easy either. Developing writing skills takes time and effort, and Professors might be pressed for time, uncertain about how to improve student writing skills, or might simply think that it is the students' responsibility to learn how to write.

At the NMBU Writing Centre, we are working to creating Writing Enriched Curriculum (WEC), to improve teaching and student development. This podcast explores some of the challenges student writing development faces, some of the disconnects between teaching methods and learning objectives, and simple tools and approaches that University Departments can apply to integrate WEC for student writing improvement.

Resources

Eveline Bailey's Levels of Critical Writing: https://embteach.com/2016/04/13/blooms-taxonomy-and-levels-of-critical-writing/

Want to learn more about WEC? https://wac.umn.edu/wec-program/wec-model

People love stories, but science writers might not consider their writing as a form of story telling.

In this episode, Niklas and Clay explore when narrative structures and techniques are valuable, why they are practical, and how to use narrative techniques in scientific and academic writing. Science writing might seem like you need to stick to the 'facts' or use what is referred to as 'anti-narrative' writing, but we go over some reasons for why narratives can help your research become more compelling for your reading audience.

We shared some visuals during this podcast, which can be seen on our YouTube Channel, or you can follow the first link below.

Show Resources

The Plot Spiral

https://www.annaclemens.com/blog/story-structure-scientific-paper

Narrative and "Anti-Narrative' in Science

https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/58/6/1224/5032878

Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate Science with Nonexpert audiences

https://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13614

The NMBU Writing Centre is more than just a place where Niklas and Clay talk writing and research.

We have a full staff of Writing Advisors who can help you improve your writing skills. In this episode, we introduce you to how you can access the Writing Centre, the services we can provide, and what you can expect from our consultations.

While we do not discuss big topics in this episode, we hoped that by looking inside how the Writing Centre operates, we can encourage some of our listeners to book an appointment and get to know some of our staff. The NMBU Writing Centre is your gateway to improving your own writing skills.

Book and appointment and learn more about the Writing Centre staff:

https://nmbuwritingcentre.setmore.com/

https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/writing/writing-advisors

Writing a thesis is no small task, so Niklas and Clay break down the process and give some suggestions on how to prepare yourself.

Our best advice is to be well prepared and organized, and know how your research process is interconnected with your writing process. This means knowing how to build a research design that is suitable to investigate your research topic and research questions, including a suitable research methodology. It also means planning for surprises, and budgeting enough time to read literature, write good notes, prepare an outline, and be able to finish a final written draft several weeks before your submission deadline.

Resources for this episode

Book an appointment at the Writing Centre: https://nmbuwritingcentre.setmore.com/

Understand your research design: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/researchdesigns

Get more help from our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfB2LMgctwc5I3tLGLwPeww

NMBU Student? Use our Scientific Writing Resource Portal in Canvas: https://nmbu.instructure.com/enroll/FYM3PK

Looking forward to another season of It's going to be all write? We are. Here is a litte taste of what is to come in the first half of 2021.

We want to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected]

Want more resources?

Visit our homepage: https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/writing  

Check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfB2LMgctwc5I3tLGLwPeww 

Get more resources from SWR100 in Canvas: https://nmbu.instructure.com/enroll/FYM3PK  

Music Credit

Coffee Shop by PYC Music | https://soundcloud.com/pycmusic 

Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com 

Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0) 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ 

It's been a year, hasn't it?

With so much happening as the semester comes to a close, and with many of us facing further Covid-19 restrictions, deadlines, and the holiday bustle, Niklas and Clay wanted to take a bit of an easy episode.

We thought we would look back at how the Corona pandemic has affected university and personal environments over the last ten months, and also discuss how our shift towards hybrid or digital working models might continue into the future. With this, we think it is important to understand how diverse skill sets will become increasingly important in universities and future careers. These skills will not only include knowing how to navigate new technologies and their applications for work and study, but learning how to be creative problem solvers, and how other skills in listening, communicating, and becoming a jack-of-all-trades might become the skill set for our future careers.

Happy holidays and we will return in 2021 for Season 3 of It's going to be all write.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode.

While looking for an interesting research article to breakdown and analyze, we realized we had the opportunity to talk briefly about mental health, discuss some interesting findings on a recent clinical trail study of depression treatment, AND compare how scientific research writing differs from scientific journalism. We had a lot of fun with this topic, and hope that you can find something useful, be it learning how to better analyze writing structures, purposes, movements, or clarity, or ways to become a more critical reader and thinker.

If you or someone you know from NMBU could benefit from mental health support services, please contact SiT:

https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/guidance/health-care-and-councelling

https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/student-information-centre

Episode Resources

JAMA Research Article: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2772630

ScienceNews.org Article: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/psilocybin-treat-depression-mushrooms-psychedelic

The Gunning-Fog Index: http://gunning-fog-index.com

Writer's Diet Test: https://writersdiet.com

Science Writing vs. Scientific Journalism Blog from Scientific American (2010): https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-line-between-science-and-journalism-is-getting-blurry-again/

As a student or researcher, there are a lot of conversations, idea exchanges, suggestions, and other forms of communication that build towards our final written projects. However, it is not always easy to know what ideas need to be credited in our written reports, theses, or manuscripts for publication.

This week, Niklas and Clay try to tackle the roles and responsibilities of mentorship, including what types of acknowledgements or citations are required from personal communications all the way to how you can improve the mentorship you receive. Mentorship comes from many different sources, and different people at different times can be beneficial to providing the research support, idea generation, and writing assistance you require.

Group work is inevitable in both university classrooms and professional careers. We are all going to need to be part of a working group that will co-author research together. And of course, most people hate group work. Niklas and Clay discuss some ideas to help smoothen out group work and collaborative research writing. As usual, the best points about collaboration have nothing to do with writing, but are relevant to smooth and well produced research reports, essays, theses, articles, and book chapters. We cover a lot of ground here, so hopefully there is something useful for Bachleor, Master, Ph.D, Post-Doc and professionals in a career already.

Further resources:

The Revision Road Map - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRwY5ktmyLM&t=438s

The Vancouver Protocol - http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

The Eisenhauer Matrix - https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/

The type of format you intend to write in helps define the type of writing that you should do. While article or essay formats are not particularly 'hot topics,' formats guide expectations, much in the same way we expect to be scared when watching a horror film, or expect to laugh at a comedy. In the same way, scientific formats give us guidance on how we can structure ideas and evidence.

Niklas and Clay walk through some of the common peer review article formats, and discuss formats for other forms of academic writing, such as Ph.D kappas, home exam papers and course essays. We really tried to think of a more interesting title for this episode, but it is what it is!