Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, creators of the website newlearningonline.com and also professors at the College of Education, University of Illinois. We talk about monastic instruction in the sixth century, we talk about textbook learning in the sixteenth century, and we talk about cybersecurity education in the twenty-first century, but overall we talk about imbalances in self agency.Interviewer: "Could you describe one pedagogical affordance of the technology on your learning platform CGScholar?"Bill Cope: "So, what we're doing is we're using big data and learning analytics as an alternative feedback system. So, what we say, then, is, okay, well: 'The test is dead! Long live assessment!' We have so much data from CGScholar. Why would you create a little sample of an arrow or two at the end of a course, when we can from day one be data mining every single thing you do? And by the way, by the end of the course, we have these literally millions of data points and for every student. Now, the other thing, as well, is, our argument is––and we call this recursive feedback––is that every little data point is a piece of actionable feedback. Someone makes a comment on what you do, you get a score from somebody on your work against a Likert scale...so what we're doing is, we have this idea of complete data transparency, but also, we're not going to make any judgments for you or about you, or the system's not going to do it, without that feedback being actionable, so that you can then improve your work. It feeds into your work. So, the difference is, instead of assessment being retrospective and judgmental, what we're doing is making micro-judgments which are prospective and constructive and going towards your learning."Visit the Learning Design and Leadership Program here and visit CGScholar here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Shyam Sharma, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. We talk about how mutually appreciative attitudes advance Writing in the Disciplines, about how other languages matter to writing in English, and about how US Presidents have changed the ways we teach writing and learn to write.Interviewer: "Where does language come in to the sort of writing development called Writing Studies or English for Academic Purposes or Academic Literacies?"Shyam Sharma: "Well, there are language-focused academic curriculums around the world. But language is not writing. If it was, then I wouldn't have my job. You know, for the most part, students who speak English as a native language wouldn't need to learn anything about genres and conventions and writing and rhetoric and communication. And so, where English is taught in non-English-speaking regions, the concern about language buries everything so far down that it is difficult for people to foreground it and to pay specialized attention to it and to develop research programs and to be funded and to be recognized and so on."Daniel Shea, heads Scholarly Communications, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Heidelberg Writing Program, a division of the Language Center at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write Daniel.Shea@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Elisa De Ranieri, Editor-in-Chief of Nature Communications. We talk about knowing the research you have done, but communicating the message you want said.Interviewer: "When a submission lands on your desk, or better said, you call it up on your screen, what are you pleased to see, what makes your work easier?"Elisa De Ranieri: "Yeah, well, I guess what makes the job easier for an editor is to receive a paper that is well-written and well-constructed and where the authors are so experienced that they know how to pitch their story. It's nice because it, obviously, spares the editor the trouble of having to unpick what's being said. You know, there are papers where––I'm not saying that they're badly written––but they are so dense because it's not a story, it's a dump of facts, so that you have to start unpicking the facts until you've made your own version of the story that the authors are trying to tell, and only then can you assess that story based on your criteria."Daniel Shea, heads Scholarly Communications, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write Daniel.Shea@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Shyam Sharma, author of Writing Support for International Graduate Students: Enhancing Transition and Success (Routledge, 2020). We talk about international students and rhetoric, international students and confidence, international students and community-based programming, and vision.Interviewer : "Could you give an example for how teachers can foster agency among international students?"Shyam Sharma : "Let's say you walk into a class and you ask, 'How do people greet in a formal academic setting.' If you say, 'How do people greet in a formal academic setting, in your local community' –– Just add that phrase at the end –– what happens is that the Chinese student versus the American student versus the Brazilian student get to share their ideas about how people (in English, of course), about how people greet each other formally. But by giving them a platform where their ideas can be brought in order to explore, that allows many of things, one being to set the terms of engagement which are, then, not my terms and you are the foreigner. Instead, at least it's a starting point. It allows the student to create these different terms of engagement on their own." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Helen Sword, author of Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard UP, 2012). We talk about bad writing, but a lot more about how to make it good. There's even a dog.Interviewer : "What is it that keeps most students and then, too, many early-career academics away from making the effort to write well?"Helen Sword : "Writing is seen as this utilitarian thing. You've got to learn it. It's got lots of rules. If you get things wrong, somebody's going to put red ink on there or red tracked changes or whatever. There's a lot of emotional baggage tied up with the hard work of writing well, and yet when I interviewed successful academic writers, what I heard over and over again, was about the pleasures that they take in the hard work of the craft. And that's where, for me, I link the pleasures of writing well back to stylish academic writing, to the craft of writing well. Those two things have got to go hand in hand to be a long-term sustainable kind of enterprise." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jo Mackiewicz, author of Writing Center Talk over Time: A Mixed-Method Study (Routledge, 2018). We talk about talk, tutor talk, student talk, spoken written-language, and Wisconsin.interviewer : "Now, this is pretty much something that a writing center is aiming for, isn't it? I mean, you don't want that––just as in the classroom with the teacher––you don't want that the writing tutor is doing all of the talking, do you?"Jo Mackiewicz : "Oh, yeah. One of the biggest goals of the writing center tutor is to try to get the student to talk. Because there's a great tendency for students to backchannel, to show they're understanding––and of course, that's their role and it makes sense that they would do that. But what a tutor wants to try to do, in the best case, is to get them to start talking, to try to start putting words together themselves, to try to reshape their words, to try to orally shape the words that would go in their papers."Daniel Shea, heads Scholarly Communications, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write Daniel.Shea@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do university presses do? And how do they contributed to public discourse?November 9 is the beginning of University Press Week, and today I had the honor of talking to Niko Pfund, the president of the Association of University Presses and the head of Oxford University Press. In the interview, we discuss the work of university presses and their value to the production of knowledge and a vibrant exchange of ideas. We also talked about the challenges UPs face generally and in the time of COVID.Pfund began his career at Oxford University Press (OUP) in New York in 1987 as an editorial assistant in law and social science before moving to NYU Press as an editor in 1990. He served as editor in chief at NYU before becoming director in 1996 and returned to Oxford in 2000 as its academic publisher. Currently he is responsible for the development of OUP’s acquisitions and editorial program for research books and reference, as well as for the management of the its North American offices.Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Kit Nicholls, Director of Cooper Union Center for Writing. We talk about writing, thinking, the university, and what everyone cares about.Interviewer : "That's the key, and the sense that I get from many students, and even also from faculty, when it comes to the point that they're writing up their results––well, it's basically, this is just a necessity, a thing that's just sort of got to be got around, got through. But if you can actually provide them with the view that the writing is the research, that you're doing your research right now as well. Or even if you can get them to drop the 'as well' and say, 'I'm doing my research still.'"Kit Nicholls : "Yeah, it's not like you do sort of all this prior work and then you sit down and write. That's a surefire way to produce some pretty terrible writing. It's much better to write your way through, which is exactly why the Center for Writing offers ongoing sessions, because otherwise students almost automatically come to the assumption that the Center of Writing is a place you come only when you've got an assignment to finish. It sends the message that writing is just a thing you do at the end. But anyone who seriously writes knows that writing is this long, complicated process."The interviewer, Daniel Shea, heads the podcast series Scholarly Communication, where the world of research publishing is brought to your ears. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write Daniel.Shea@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transforming Ethos: Place and the Material in Rhetoric and Writing (Utah State UP, 2020) approaches writing studies from the rhetorical flank, the flank which, for many, is the only flank the discipline has. However, at a time when universities are optimizing structurally and streamlining pedagogically, the book must plead the case for a university where character is formed. Now that writing studies has shouldered up to its other disciplinary and institutional neighbors, composition instructors need to begin asking themselves tough questions about administration, teaching, and assessment, and perhaps more importantly, composition instructors need to begin providing answers.Rosanne Carlo provides answers, answers which spring from the New Rhetoric, from the writings of Jim Corder, from ethos as a gathering place for community, from kairos, chora, and from many another well found and well placed theoretical tool turned to her overriding purpose of teaching writing and teaching rhetoric as a way of life.Scholarly Communication is the podcast series about how knowledge gets known. Scholarly Communication adheres to the principle that research improves when scholars better understand their role as communicators. Give scholars more opportunities to learn about publishing, and scholars will communicate their research better.The interviewer, Daniel Shea, heads Scholarly Communication, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write writingprogram@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I put down Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (University of Chicago Press, 2016), I looked up and began to wonder. I wondered about the book on gnomic poetry in Medieval Greek I had read over the weekend. I wondered about the PDF conference volume on my desktop between other PDFs downloaded at my university library. Casting an eye to the bookshelves along my wall, I looked at the spines of all the books there, upright and peaceful in their rows, and I wondered just who did the publishing of those books. Who printed the bindings and pages? Who stocked backlisted copies in the warehouse? Who encouraged booksellers to buy? Who adopted the project early stages? Who chauffeured the manuscript through marketing? Which editor oversaw production while which harried professor, between lectures biting into a sandwich, flipped the pages and weighed the arguments and challenged the ideas? Getting It Published opens up the other spaces which are inside of every book. There's quite a lot besides just the research inside those books on our Works Cited lists, and we don't know. Or we don't know enough, anyway.Getting It Published, as the subtitle announces, is the guide to everything a scholar needs to know about where his or her research goes. William Germano, the author, is the guide of the book. A deft hand at elegant and lucid prose, William Germano has the industry experience, the university experience, and the teaching experience to know what writers of research will need when they go to submit their own manuscript, the manuscript that just might become the next book on a shelf or the next PDF on a desktop.Scholarly Communication is the podcast series about how knowledge gets known. Scholarly Communication adheres to the principle that research improves when scholars better understand their role as communicators. Give scholars more opportunities to learn about publishing, and scholars will communicate their research better.The interviewer, Daniel Shea, heads Scholarly Communication, a Special Series on the New Books Network. Daniel is Director of the Writing Program at Heidelberg University, Germany. Just write writingprogram@zsl.uni-heidelberg.de Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices