by Cally Guerin
At Adelaide University we have just tried our first experiment with Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo). Inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Charlotte Frost developed an academic version of this concept a couple of years ago that has grown and grown since then. Despite the feeling that the word AcWriMo sounds like it might turn into ‘acrimonious’, the exact opposite is true. I know that some academics have expressed reservations about the concept of AcWriMo, but I decided to give it a go anyway.
As an academic developer running programs for research students, I wanted AcWriMo to achieve several different things for participants at my university. Mostly, I hoped that this experiment would:
- encourage more writing;
- build a sense of community; and
- provide a form of online writing group for those who can’t (or don’t want to) attend face-to-face sessions.
Of course, there were some teething problems. Originally I had planned to use Facebook for the community discussions, as other academics tell me they’ve had good success with engaging students in the space they already occupy. Perhaps that’s true for undergrads, but in the end I chose not to use Facebook after several students told me they prefer to keep it for purely private social interactions and/or had previously had bad experiences with too much information being ‘shared’ by others on Facebook. So we ended up using Wikispaces for the community discussions—partly because it’s free, and partly because it is really easy to use.
Quite a bit of the early correspondence to set up AcWriMo took place via the (supposedly outdated but really quite convenient) email system. This is probably because my initial email inviting all research students to participate was sent out through the university-wide email list. I’m of the generation that likes email, but the participants don’t seem to mind such an old-fashioned approach, especially since it is our university’s usual form of communication.
Then we used Dropbox to house a register of names, writing goals, and to tally each day’s writing achievements. I had tried out a couple of alternatives for the register, including Google Docs with spreadsheets, but any free versions seemed clumsy and hard to manage. Dropbox, in contrast, is good for Word documents, and it’s free. There were a few problems in terms of students receiving the right link, but one of the participants worked out what I was doing wrong. In the meantime, another resourceful participant had created a basic, editable table in Wikispaces, and many others have chosen to stick with this as their main place for recording daily output. One of the great advantages of working with clever, resourceful doctoral candidates is that they are very good at solving problems (thank you both!). Having all the information in one place is a better way to go and next time we will use just the Wikispaces site.
Participants set writing targets ranging from 100 to 500 words per day. Any kind of target is fine—the key is making a public commitment and then feeling an obligation to follow through. As a role model for my first group I wasn’t always quite as productive as I’d hoped, and several others commented on the Discussion Board that they’d had unexpected interruptions during the month too. Many, however, exceeded their promised word count, and I for one found myself trying to write just one more sentence so that I could meet my obligations.
Did I get all three of my pre-Christmas wishes? Yep, I think so. Thousands of words have been written during this concentrated effort; maybe they would have been written anyway, but this way there is a record of the achievement. There is certainly a sense of a community developing, with a few key contributors to the Discussion Board but no doubt plenty of others reading and lurking in the background—they are all busy adding to their daily scores, even if not responding directly to my discussion prompts. Already some have asked if they have to finish at the end of November, or can we continue to have the Wikispace (the answer is a resounding yes!). And finally, most of the names on the register are not people I’ve come across in the other writing groups and workshops I run for research students, so AcWriMo seems to have reached out to a different group from our other offerings.
Overall, as a lead-up to the end of both the calendar year and the academic year in Australia, this has been an invigorating experience. I’m already planning to do it again in 2014, and hope some of this year’s participants are keen to try again—unless, of course, they’ve established such good writing habits this month that they complete their theses before then!
Have you ever been involved in AcWriMo? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences, both positive and negative, and any tips you have for making the most of it.
Hi all, thanks Cally. I participated in this group. Unfortunately I had a conference in Perth where I was speaking, a poster at a conference in Sydney and 2 other presentations at home in Adelaide (+ a busted ankle) so November was a difficult month for me to meet my writing commitments.
I set a lowly amount of 250 words a day but it was achievable and also easy to exceed. Although I was only really dedicated for 1 week.
I have been reading Wendy Belcher’s book on writing a journal article. It encourages teamwork in writing and I am inspired by it. However, I am fairly isolated from similar students where I am based. This group enabled me to engage with other students. I have been trying to find something like this for the past 6 months – some writing buddies who perhaps may turn into proof-reading and analysis buddies – even if they remain electronic. I couldn’t attend our School’s journal club due to a clash with my one clinical day. So I think that the online environment may better suit many.
I think that this experiment was a great first start. I would like to continue to be part of it and see it grow further. Thanks again, Clare.
Wow, what a brave and robust scholar you are! Online writing groups can be a useful way to find writing buddies for lots of people who have complicated schedules, and glad you’ve found a few this way.
Hi Cally & Claire,
Thanks so much, Cally, for sharing in detail how you executed AcWriMo at your uni. I’m keen to give it a go with our research students at MQ next year, and your blog post made it sound do-able!
Your (pl) mentions of “online writing groups” also acted as a beacon to me as I’m conducting an exploratory research project with Olga Kozar on online writing groups for off-campus doctoral students, to provide exactly what Clare McNally was looking for: “writing buddies who perhaps may turn into proof-reading and analysis buddies – even if they remain electronic”.
AcWriMo sounds like a great way not only to increase writing output of individuals, but also for geographically dispersed research students to meet and later form online peer-review writing groups. Is that what you have done, Clare?
thanks again,
Juliet
PS: I always think of lacrimosa when I hear “acwrimo”, but by the sounds of your reports, I’m sure there were no tears shed with your participants last month!
Hi Juliet, glad that this has encouraged you to try it at MQ. I’m not terribly confident about all the various online technologies, and it was good advice from others to start small. It’s certainly one way of providing remote/off-campus students with some kind of community. Good luck – let us know how you get on. Cally
I can definitely confirm that the thousands of words I wrote throughout November would not have been written without Cally setting up AcWriMo. I now have a good draft of my next chapter and a new belief that I can quickly and easily (!) write the next (-last) one. I have established better writing habits and although they have slackened off a bit, they are still much better than before I began AcWriMo. So, big thanks to Cally!
Thanks, Liz. Delighted to know that the concept worked for you – now onto the next chapter….
Hi Cally,
Hey snap! We’ve just run an AcWriMo event for the first time this year too, at Charles Sturt Uni. I piloted a week-long AcWriMo bootcamp during November, in a synchronous hybrid mode, with about half the group joining in person and the other half joining us online via webconferencing (Adobe Connect).
We had a lot of similar experiences to those you mention. The group (a mix of staff and students, mainly doctoral candidates) all really want to do it again and do it regularly – in fact we are doing another bootcamp in January to kickstart everyone’s writing for 2014.
We already have weekly online Shut Up & Write groups for research writers, and some of the bootcampers already go to those – but people said that they got a lot out of the ‘special event’ nature of the bootcamp. (Thanks to PhD2Published & Charlotte Frost for that sense of an international occasion during AcWriMo.)
I was nodding madly at your mention of community. That feeling of community among HDRs from different disciplines/faculties, which has built up here in the last couple of years of workshops and writing groups, has been a delight to see. An overlapping group of ‘regulars’ are now embarking on a peer feedback writing circle.
Cassily
Hi Cassily, Sounds like a great idea to link AcWriMo to a bootcamp and I’m also really interested in your mixture of in person and online participation. I’ll have to give both ideas a go. Thanks for adding your innovations to the mix. Cally