[en] This chapter reports on the design, delivery and evaluation of an online research article writing course for doctoral students. The course format was a response to COVID-19 but was designed to be sustainable through enabling flexible, interactive, personalised and independent learning. Its five major components are independent learning tasks, online workshops, writing output, peer review and consultations. Moodle is used for resources and assignments; WebEx for workshops and consultations. Students independently use the e-coursebook to read the theory and submit tasks based on their own texts and articles in their discipline ahead of a workshop on the topic. Additionally, they periodically submit article drafts and engage in peer review. Consultations with the instructor further personalise learning. Having described the course, the chapter goes on to evaluate its affordances and issues by reporting student feedback and teachers’ experiences. It was found that students greatly appreciated the systematic work on their writing in tasks and workshops. However, workshop preparation was very time-consuming for teachers and students would prefer them to be ‘offline’. Furthermore, multidisciplinary peer reviewing and the need to write throughout the course were positively perceived, although requiring greater flexibility in submission times. Consultations were also rated as extremely useful. We conclude with recommendations regarding online course delivery and a blended adaptation for post-COVID purposes.
Disciplines :
Languages & linguistics
Author, co-author :
Deroey, Katrien ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Humanities (DHUM)
Skipp, Jennifer; University of Trier
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Designing and delivering an online research article writing course for doctoral students in Luxembourg during Covid-19
Publication date :
2023
Main work title :
International perspectives on teaching academic English in turbulent times
Aitchison, C., & Guerin, C. (2014). Writing groups for doctoral education and beyond: Innovations in practice and theory. Routledge.
Angelova, M., & Riazantseva, A. (1999). "If you don't tell me, how can I know?" A case study of four international students learning to write the US way. Written Communication, 16(4), 491-525. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088399016004004
Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Borokhovski, E., Wade, C. A., Tamim, R. M., Surkes, M. A., & Bethel, E. C. (2009). A meta-analysis of three types of interaction treatments in distance education. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 1234-1289. https://doi. org/10.3102/0034654309333844
Breeze, R. (2012). Rethinking academic writing pedagogy for the European University. Rodopi.
Caffarella, R. S., & Barnett, B. G. (2000). Teaching doctoral students to become scholarly writers: The importance of giving and receiving critiques. Studies in Higher Education, 25(1), 39-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/030750700116000
Casanave, C. P. (2010). Dovetailing under impossible circumstances. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler, & A. Lee (Eds.), Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond (pp. 47-63). Routledge.
Charles, M. (2018). Corpus-assisted editing for doctoral students: More than just concordancing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 36, 15-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jeap.2018.08.003
Cho, K., & MacArthur, C. (2010). Student revision with peer and expert reviewing. Learning and Instruction, 20, 328-338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.08.006
Deroey, K. L. B. (2011). Academic English: Writing a research article: Life sciences and medicine. Academia Press.
Fenton-Smith, B., Humphreys, P., & Walkinshaw, I. (2018). On evaluating the effectiveness of university-wide credit-bearing English language enhancement courses. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 31, 72-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2017.12.001
Flowerdew, L. (2015). Using corpus-based research and online academic corpora to inform writing of the discussion section of a thesis. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 20, 58-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.06.001
Gomez, S., & Collela, C. (2020). The world of education after COVID-19: How COVID-19 has affected young universities. YERUN: Young European Universities. www.yerun.eu/ wp-content/uploads/2020/07/YERUN-COVID-VFinal-OnlineSpread.pdf
Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause Review, 27, 1-12.
Hyland, K. (2002). Specificity revisited: How far should we go now? English for Specific Purposes, 21(4), 385-395. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(01)00028-X
Hyland, K. (2013). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge and reputation. Language Teaching, 46(1), 53-70.
OECD. (2019). Education at a glance 2019: OECD indicators. OECD Publishing. https:// doi.org/10.1787/f8d7880d-en
Paré, A. (2010). Slow the presses: Concerns about premature publication. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler, & A. Lee (Eds.), Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond (pp. 42-58). Routledge.
Thomson, C., & Allan, B. (2010). Supporting the learning and networking experiences of doctoral students. In L. H. Dirckninck-Holmfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. de Laat, D. McConnell, & T. Ryberg (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th international conference on networked learning (pp. 421-428). Lancaster University.
Yasuda, S. (2011). Genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: Developing writers' genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(2), 111-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2011.03.001
Zhu, W. (2004). Faculty views on the importance of writing, the nature of academic writing, and teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(1), 29-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2004.04.00