Struggling online

Besides the wonderful "Future of Storytelling" MOOC, I am also enrolled in a course of Political Philosophy: An Introduction. Both of the courses are provided by IVERSITY platform.

Today I was listening to the lectures by dr Furio Cerutti. He is an old Italian professor working hard to provide people with the necessary means to learn about political philosophy. I really admire his way of communicating with the audiences. He has a unique kind of sincerity, and a special charm when taking the students through the complex dynamics of political philosophy.

Prof Cerutti gives the global audiences some good old lectures of key terms that are provided online with an extensive reading list for those seriously interested. No special tricks, no special struggles, nothing too complex for an introductory course. I just love this kind of simplicity and clarity!

The professor from Florence is also special because of his very nice letters to students. I will post here the last one he sent us earlier today. Here is something to learn for all of us working online and writing - how to maintain our authentic voice, and stay close to our audiences.    

Dear students,

as the lectures, called on the iversity website 'chapters', are intended to be an ongoing argument from the first to the fifth video (or micro-unit), you will find the quizzes as well as the slides used in the lecture in the fifth video of each lecture or chapter.

As soon (in twelve days or so) as I have the shooting of part 2 of the course behind me, I will design and upload some 'discussion questions' that may enhance your interaction, and also go back to some of the questions raised in the Forum.

Technology and format of a MOOC are uncharted waters for all, especially for your old professor; he still hopes he can rely on your patience for the adjustments that become necessary. To put it as the Austrian philosopher of science Otto Neurath put it with regard to scientific knowledge, "we are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom".

Sincerely

Furio Cerutti

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

Research Plan Guidelines

I have another deadline facing me in few days. It has to do with the Writing II: Rhetorical Composing coursera I am taking. It is already week 7 by now. I have managed to make all the deadlines so far. Lets see how it goes this time... 

At the moment they suggest me to make a research plan. To support the process have the professors provided nice guidelines some of which I would like to share:

Given your claim, audience, and argumentative purpose, consider message, medium, and manner as well as recency, relevance, and readership in examining and evaluating the research and evidence you’re compiling: 

Message: Identify your persuasive claim and purpose. What is your claim and what end do you envision your text achieving? Are you hoping to make your audience better informed? Consider alternative perspectives? Become more tolerant of alternative perspectives? Change an opinion? Move to action?
Medium: What form will the argument take? What are the implications for you as a writer as you engage readers in this medium or genre? If you’re writing a blog post, how does that affect how you argue? How does it affect how you cite your sources? If you’re writing an opinion piece for a professional newsletter, how do the conventions and constraints of that genre and location affect the decisions you make about how you use and refer to your sources?
Manner: Consider again rhetorical appeals, metaphors, commonplaces, rhetorical tense, and visual rhetoric as you work toward a draft of your research assignment. How will you employ these elements in service of achieving your persuasive ends?
Recency: In what ways does the recency of source material matter? In other words, from what timeframe are you most likely use material? Why?
Relevance: Of what relevance to your argument is the material? In other words, what kinds of material—and from what sources—have you found and why are you considering using it? Why is it relevant for this audience? For this purpose? For this venue?
Readership: What material will be most persuasive to your audience? Why?

Now consider how you might align or adapt the source materials you’ve collected to suit your audience, purpose, and argumentative goal:

 Alignment: Do the sources you’re using align with your opinions or claims? To what extent or under what circumstances? Alternatively, if you’re using sources you’re contesting, how do those sources diverge from or not align with your position? It’s important to clarify—both for yourself and for your readers—your position relative to your sources.

Adaptation: In what ways might you need to adapt or adjust evidence from your sources to suit your argument? For example, if a source addresses the effects of spousal abuse on women in their 60s but you’re addressing the effects of spousal abuse on women in their 30s, what adaptation might you need to make to maintain both the integrity of the evidence (your source) and your claim and argument? 

All the vocabulary and tools used before the writing process starts, are explained quite well in these few short sections. I am writing nearly every day. Details like that become automatic and I do not actually analyse each time in such a linear way how I am addressing it all, but I still have an explanation to each of these, if someone cares to ask. 

Since I have not had time to start the research process for this assignment just yet, I do not have a clear picture to share here now. I have been reading and thinking about Michel Foucault and postmodern research in education since I am giving a lecture about the topic next week in Norway. I will probably write something in this direction. Just two days ago I was visiting Uppsala, it is one of the places where Foucault used to work, he wrote his "Madness and civilization" there. Unfortunately the Swedish professors at the time did not realise the value of the ideas the young man was presenting and so he had to move to another university in order to get his doctoral thesis accepted. It is a wonderful story about madness and higher education system. Perhaps I´ll write about that...