Storytelling and academic writing. Part 1

Two weeks ago I started a storytelling course with approximately 60 000 students from all over the world. The first week we had lectures to teach us about some basic elements in story building. Now it is already the second week, and we are talking about TV series - a topic not exactly in the very heart of my interest in storytelling...

Instead, I would like to investigate storytelling in academic writing, because I believe it can bring science much closer to the "ordinary" people, or even, to the researchers themselves. Statistics show, that most of the articles published, only have one single reader. That means we have to learn some new ways of telling people about our work.

One good example of popular science´s success is TED-talks project. Everyone can listen to these talks, and experience, how complicated stuff are made short interesting chunks for global audiences. They even have a special section about storytelling, containing 6 talks. I would like to share with you the first one of these, presented by a Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is talking about "the danger of a single story".

Another way of sharing, is using graphic storytelling. Ken Robinson´s Ted-talk about Changes in Education Paradigms, was drawn on a whiteboard by graphic facilitator, and become viral. Today more than 10 million people have seen the clip in youtube. Simple picture, and few selected words make a very powerful combination.

These two examples make it clear, that using the possibilities of storytelling can make a difference. But how to bring the elements of storytelling into academic writing? 

I will give you a great example of an academic article published in 2009 by professor Rosalind Gill from UK. 

How are you? 

I am totally stressed at the moment, to be honest. Work is piling up and I'm just drowning. I don't know when I'm going to have time to start on that secrecy and silence book chapter – I’m so, so late with it now, and I feel really bad that I'm letting Roisin down, but I literally never have a second. 

I know, I know exactly what you mean. 

I mean, I had 115 e-mails yesterday and they all needed answering. I'm doing 16 hour days just trying to keep on top of it. I feel like I'm always late with everything, and my 'to do' list grows faster than I can cross things off it. It’s like one of those fungi in a horror movie that doubles in size every few hours! (Laughter)And I never ever have chance to do any of my own work. I’m sleeping really badly and it all just feels completely out of control… 

It's the same for me. Reading? What that? Thinking? No chance! And you feel awful, don’t you. With me I feel like I’m constantly stealing time from the kids too- I’ll go off to check messages in the middle of a game of Monopoly or something. Sometimes I just feel like quitting. 

Yeah I know. It just gets worse. Still hoping to win the lottery, then?(laughter) But how are you? 

Do you really want to know?! (laughter) (Yeh) well, awful actually. I’m really fed up. I heard yesterday that my article for x journal was turned down. (Oh no!) You know, the one I worked on for ages and ages.I poured so much of myself into that piece (I know). And one of the referee's comments was vile – it said something like "my first year undergraduates have a better understanding of the field than this author does -- why are they wasting all of our time". When I read it it was like a slap in the face, Ros. It was all I could do not to burst out crying in the postroom, but I had a lecture right afterwards so I somehow managed to pull myself together and go and do that. But last night, I just didn't sleep (poor you) I just kept on going over and over with all these negative comments ringing round my head. And you know the worst thing is, they are right: I am useless (no you're not), I'm a complete fraud, and I should have realised that I was going to be found out if I sent my work to a top journal like that. 

This is the way how she starts her article "Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia". I love her beginning! You just cannot help, but to feel sympathy, to find mirroring elements of your own personal academic struggles, you want to be connected, and find out more of the lives of these people. She goes on changing the gear to a more of an academic approach, explaining the context, analysing, but still keeping her personal voice, the I in the discussion...

This is a transcript of a conversation I had with a female friend in the few days before
(finally) beginning work on this chapter. Both speakers are white, both work in ‘old’ (pre-1992) British Universities, and both are employed on ‘continuing’ contracts - thus are already marked as ‘privileged’ in multiple ways in the contemporary academy. Mine is easily recognizable as the voice which worries about how late this article is! Some readers may find this fragment of conversation rather odd, but I suspect for many more it will appear familiar and may strike deep chords of recognition. It speaks of many things: exhaustion, stress, overload, insomnia, anxiety, shame,
aggression, hurt, guilt and feelings of out-of-placeness, fraudulence and fear of exposure within the contemporary academy. These feelings, these affective embodied experiences, occupy a strange position in relation to questions of secrecy and silence. 

Professor Gill is breaking the traditional rules of academia, and sharing her own academic life, her personal effort to create this piece of writing, and connecting it to the wider problematics of neo-liberal society, and its academia. Partly literature, partly research. Touching the borders, and inviting to think together... 

What would it mean to turn our lens upon our own labour processes, organisational governance and conditions of production? What would we find if, instead of studying others, we focussed our gaze upon our own community, and took as our data not the polished publication or the beautifully crafted talk, but the unending flow of communications and practices in which we are all embedded and enmeshed, often reluctantly: the proliferating e-mails, the minutes of meetings, the job applications, the peer reviews, the promotion assessments, the drafts of the RAE narrative, the committee papers, the student feedback forms, even the after-seminar chats?

Don´t you just want to hug her? On my computer I do have more examples of this storytelling kind of academic writing. Unfortunately not all of it is publicly available. Perhaps I will share some more already next time... 

Taking your writing to the next level: Storytelling #storymooc

Well, it has been quite a while since I was sharing some new ideas or materials about writing on this page. Now I am back from holidays, creating writing workshops, and a small poetry festival, reading and writing myself.  The autumn has arrived in Sweden. It feels that I am ready now to continue my journey in English writing.

Besides grammar, academic argumentation, and rhetorics, one must also learn to built up a living connection between yourself as a writer, your topic, and your readers. It is one thing to know what to say, but knowing how to say it so that people get engaged in what ever you have to say, is the most important part of your writing.

Just few days back, I discovered an interesting webinar "Researcher, write to be read!". Swedish researcher Jenny Helin was talking online about the research texts that are killing the audiences with their boring stereotyped lines. She asks for the ethics of writing: What kind of reality are we creating with our boring academic texts that no one wishes to read? 

I totally agree with her suggestions to think of an academic text as a meeting place for a discussion. Instead of purely informing, open a dialogue, invite your reader to participate, and collaborate. It is of course much easier to say than to do. Especially, because of the traditionally very strict academic publishing rules that allow very little creativity, and experimentation in forms.

Something has to be done, because already today, Jenny Helin says, there is an average less than one reader per academic article. Isn´t that alarming? Why to write about your research in the first place, when no one is actually reading it? What greater meaning will our thousands of hours of serious work have, if nothing grows out of it in the future?

During my personal academic career, I have come across some pretty good examples about communicative scientific texts. One of my favourite being Susan Engel´s "Children´s need to know: Curiosity in Schools". She twines the elements of storytelling with research facts, and creates an argumentation that is much more appealing than in most other cases.

In order to take my own writing further, and break the mainstream trend of boring texts, I decided to participate in the online course about the future of storytelling. I will learn how to bring stories to my writing, and make it more alive.

The course starts in few days. See you there!


You might also be interested in:

The Beginning
Discussions with an Apple Tree
Creative imagination in writing
Research plan guidelines
My creative writing blog in English

Coming This Year: A MOOC for English Language Learners

The University of California, Berkeley will offer another free online course in writing under the title College Writing 2x: Principles of Written Communication.

College Writing 2x is a writing course designed specially for learners of English. It will be offered through edX.org, and will be completely free. It will use some of the most advanced tools in online writing instruction. Students will have meaningful ways to practice their writing and get feedback on how well they are doing.

The course will be taught by Maggie Sokolik. Dr. Sokolik received her Ph.D. in applied linguistics from UCLA. She has taught writing and technical communication at UC Berkeley since 1992. She is the author of over twenty ESL and composition textbooks, including Sound Ideas, co-authored with Michael Krasny. She has also written for and been featured in several educational video projects in Japan. She travels frequently to speak about grammar, writing, and instructor education.

The course plan includes:

 - 5 weeks studies of Written English (A review of basic grammar terminology and understanding; writing effective sentences and paragraphs; introductions and conclusions; strategies for writing longer texts; thesis statements);

 - 5 weeks studies of Techniques in Editing and Revision (Proofreading and self-editing; revision vs. editing; common errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling; understanding tone and diction; vocabulary development.)

- 5 weeks studies of Modes of Written Communication (Formal and informal writing; effective email communication; academic writing; memos; project proposals; creative writing; technical writing)

The initial plan is to make the course available twice a year. The first course starts in September 2013.

Source: http://writing.berkeley.edu/classes-and-awp/mooc

Learning Objectives of English Composition online course

Since I am now finishing the course about writing I decided to share the list of learning objectives set for us by professor Denise Comer. Here you can see what we have been working with and what were the goals.

Course Learning Objectives

• Summarize, analyze, question, and evaluate written and visual texts
• Argue and support a position
• Recognize audience and disciplinary expectations
• Identify and use the stages of the writing process
• Identify characteristics of effective sentence and paragraph-level prose
• Apply proper citation practices
• Discuss how to transfer and apply your writing knowledge to other writing occasions

Project 1 (Weeks 1-3): Critical Review
How do we become experts? I will ask you to draft and revise a critical response to an article about expertise by Daniel Coyle. Specifically, we will focus on how to:

• read critically;
• summarize, question, analyze, and evaluate written text;
• engage with the work of others;
• understand the stages of the writing process;
• workshop writing;
• respond towards revision;
• incorporate reader feedback;
• integrate quotes/evidence;
• cite the work of others; and
• craft effective titles.

Project 2 (Weeks 4-5): Analyzing a Visual Image
What does expertise look like? How do we define it? I will ask you to select a visual image depicting your selected area of expertise and then explicate that image in order to make an argument about what expertise looks like and how it can be defined. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Project 1, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:

• summarize, questions, analyze, and evaluate visual texts;
• argue and support a position;
• use evidence;
• achieve cohesion;
• develop paragraph unity;
• revise; and
• edit.

Project 3 (Weeks 6-9): Case Study
What can we learn about expertise in a particular area? What does it take to succeed? I will ask you to research a particular example of expert achievement in your selected area and, drawing on multiple resources, make an argument about expertise. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Projects 1 and 2, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:

• conduct research;
• write an extended argument;
• develop an intertextual conversation;
• understand popular sources and scholarly sources;
• create effective introductions; and
• write strong conclusions.

Project 4 (Weeks 10-12): Writing an Op-Ed
What do you think people need to know about expertise in your selected area? In this fourth and final project, we will turn to a more public form of writing as I ask you to write an op-ed (opposite the editorial page) about your selected area of expertise for a publication of your choosing (you do not actually have to submit it to that publication, but I encourage you to do so). We'll also be working together to collaboratively crowdsource a bibliography of potential resources. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Projects 1,2, and 3, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:

• write for more public audiences;
• write concisely;
• edit and proofread thoroughly;
• decide whether to use active or passive voice; and
• transfer the knowledge, practices, approaches and skills we learned in this course to new writing contexts.

Here you can see that mooc courses are much more than just an easy way to certificate. I have been writing a lot, learning a lot and giving so much feedback that it is a whole special chapter of this online learning experience.  

Mooc miracle: 27 courses in 10 months

I am finishing with one of the writing moocs I have been taking during the last months. It feels like being part of a writing marathon. The last deadline for the writing assignment in English Composition one course has just passed. We had to write an op-ed using about 800 words. I managed in time but was quite close to give up because of the time frame not fitting in my last weeks schedule. I ended up writing about change in education, if you are interested in the topic then it is possible to read it online in AppleTree "Where is the change in education?".

When I was posting my link to the facebook group of the course I discovered a posting made by a fellow student Achint Nigam from Kanpur, Uttar Paradesh * in India:

"Finally, this one is also over, and its time for a break from moocs, this was my 27th mooc..btw.. over a period of 10 months :D"

There are people really taking the most of the MOOCs as you can see. Twenty seven moocs in ten months time! Why not?!? Here is some great piece of advice for the beginners shared in the same thread by the experienced online student.

do not engage in courses that are not directly going to help you. i.e. just for the sake of doing a course. I did some courses which I did not understand a bit, but they were very easy to complete hence completed them and wasted some valuable time. Second, don't get disheartened in courses which have written assignments, there are times when you don't get marks that you deserve, and become a cry baby on forum, remember there is no redressal for such errors yet. its better to quit some courses in order to do other with adequate rigor. And lastly there are so many platforms with moocs, so occasionally keep checking what is starting where. And to finish off, you will make many friends, from the other side of globe so interact and enjoy. There are times when there is evening on other side, and you have just waken up.. 

There has been a huge discussion about the dropout rate being exceptionally high in moocs (about 95%) and this student also gets question about the number of his dropouts in the thread.

ya, i dropped out of many.. last month only I dropped form two psychology courses.. and another english course. Earlier dropped some statistics courses, which were not related to my area of interest.

I have dropped out many as well, the statistics course being one of these. It was so theoretical and boring even I am doing statistics much and usually like it.

But anyway, it is amazing how much you can learn through the courses! My experience about writing in English has been very positive. One can only learn to write while writing and an online course can provide a great possibility to do so. I will receive my first certificate within a week after having given feedback for the other students.

Where to next? I´ll keep posting.


*Kanpur, previously Cawnpore, is the largest industrial city of Uttar Pradesh and also is the administrative headquarters of Kanpur Nagar district & Kanpur division. It is known as the Economic and Industrial Capital of Uttar Pradesh. It is also known as Leather City as it contains one of the largest and finest tanneries in India and in South Asia.

Author´s guide to slow twitter #artofeducation

I started with twitter @tammevelin few weeks ago, and was going through all the experiences described in most of the guides for beginners in twitter... I have found out that many online writers learn soon how to start to use the twitter tools for automatic online marketing and tend to forget about the real meaning of communication between us, human beings. Instead it is the machine that chooses whom to follow or whom to dump, it is the machine that finds the keywords of the day, they will RT(retweet) because then you are kind of forced to return the favour etc.  

Human beings are machines
human beings are machines
human beings are machines
human beings are ...

Are we? Machines?

Thanks to your blogpost, Richard, I found some new information about how some "professional" people treat others with the help of the available online tools. I know now, that I have to learn to make a difference between the real communication, personal meetings online, you sending me a message, and the advertising industry shallow lines to sell a product.  

I do not need to sell anything and I buy so very rarely. Writing is a way of life to me, meeting people is a possibility to co-create our worlds together. You might think that it is naive but I call it authentic and slow life. Meeting the Other is what brings value, that is what creates what´s human in us.

I like the idea of being present while communicating with others and dislike the automatic approach, the social media machinery. I am inviting people to think twice before giving up their personal presence while sending out their unique messages to the world, sending their messages to us. The automatic messages loose their value, you will be alone much too quickly, we all will be alone because no one will be reading these automatic messages sent in every 24,5 minutes 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In this way you turn yourself into machines, you are part of something else, something not human and the communication has lost all its meaning. There is no you and me anymore. It is just the machinery continuing the "business as usual".

I look outside through my windows and see how the spring is coming, write some lines and send a tweet or write a blog post. My life is not automatic, it is real. I am present.

#artofeducation

Science writing online. Who participates?

Stanford University had an online writing class for science writing autumn semester in 2012 and 11 000 people responded to their pre-course survey. Who were these people taking free online classes at Stanford University in order to improve their writing?

-35% are graduate students; 17% are undergraduates; 22% are research scientists or engineers; 8% are academics/professors; and 3% are professional writers. (The remaining 15% don’t fall in one of these bins.)
-33% are from computer science, engineering, or math; 28% from biology or medicine; 15% from physics, chemistry, or earth science; and 10% from the social sciences. (Another 7% are in other scientific areas; and 7% are non-scientists.)
-69% of you indicated that you intend to participate in all the assignments, including writing papers and editing your peers’ work. 

The information is based on the welcoming note sent out on Mon 1 Oct 2012 8:55 AM CEST (UTC +0200) and available online at coursera.com course homepage.

As you can see most of the people who take the writing classes are professional and well educated. In one of my recent posts at the AppleTree I asked who are the experts in education and did not answer. Perhaps that here provides us with a small hint about MOOC.