Improve your academic and scientific writing! Join a series of workshops with an American expert

Organisers from VSB-TUO have prepared two activities during this event. One of them is intended for tutors who would like to incorporate academic writing into their teaching to help students while writing their final theses. The second is aimed at teachers and postgraduate students who want to improve their own competence in academic writing (Writing for Publication).

"The week begins with three workshops where university teachers of engineering disciplines will learn why teaching writing is important, what the key aspects of academic writing are and the process of learning to write. They will also become familiar with best practices for creating and evaluating assignments and discover how writing processes can effectively be supported through feedback and revision. These workshops will be very interactive; teachers will have the opportunity to discuss the materials, reflect on their own teaching and create handouts that they can use in their classes," said Alena Kašpárková from the Department of Environmental Engineering on behalf of the organisers. According to Kašpárková, the workshops aim to provide teachers with enough information and materials to be able to create and support academic writing in their disciplines, in both English and Czech.

Professor Driscoll will also lend a helping hand to authors of academic texts, lecturers and PhD students. During a workshop on Thursday, September 8, she will introduce them to key strategies for successful planning and writing of a scientific publication. This workshop will also be interactive.

The lectures by the American expert, who also cooperates with the PhD Academy at VSB-TUO, will be concluded with a Friday lecture within the InfoDay PhD Academy event, on Writing Your Way into Your Discipline: How Learning to Write Creates Expertise. She will remind us of the importance of scientific writing and its impact on the development of a scientist, in the sense of how a student becomes an expert. "Developing expertise in disciplinary writing not only teaches scientific thinking and argumentation skills, but deepens professional identity, helps to understand one's field and one's place in it, and supports the transition from academic writing as a student to an expert writing for a scientific audience," surmises Jana Kukutschová, Vice-Rector for Science and Research, on behalf of the organisers.

Dana Lynn Driscoll is also co-editor of the open textbook series Writing Spaces, which reaches millions of students each year, and during her tenure at Purdue University she also ran the world-renowned Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), one of the world's largest and oldest scientific writing-related web resources.

The registration form for the first three workshops (capacity 25 places) together with further details can be found here. For the fourth workshop (capacity 45 seats), designed for teachers and PhD students, you can register here.