Syllabus template and resources for my longstanding UC Berkeley course EDUC 209: Academic Writing Support Group. Some colleagues have found these useful, so here they are rendered from simple Markdown files: a human-readable filetype that you can import into Google Docs, convert into HTML files, or otherwise edit and use across various platforms.
“What is going on?” notes help other group members tailor their feedback to your needs. Hopefully, these notes will also get you thinking more deeply about writing itself. When you submit a piece of writing for feedback, it should be accompanied by quick descriptions of:
Context. Let us know what your piece of writing is for. Is this working toward a position paper? Grant proposal? Journal article? Additionally, if you are sharing a small part of a longer piece, let us know (briefly) what your reader will already know when they come to the piece you are sharing. For example, if you’d like feedback on an analysis of data from a larger project, don’t waste your precious space including details of the project. However, help the readers know what to expect by saying something like “This is an analysis of data I collected as part of the Algebra Teaching Study. You can learn more about that project a rats.berkeley.edu”. “You’ll notice I use Aziz’s Very Interesting Framework or VIF. This is already described in the Theoretical Framework section of the paper; for a quick review check out vif.fakewebsite.com.”
Audience, Purpose, and Genre. Describe who is your primary audience with some detail. For example, “academics interested in science education” is probably not specific enough. Name specific subfields or collections of scholars with whom you’d like to be in conversation. This can include journals (JLS, JChemEd), conferences (ICLS, AIEd), professional organizations (NCTM for a practitioner-oriented piece, or Spencer Foundation for a grant proposal), or research lines (the TELS community, the Data Science Ed community) where you’d like your writing to eventually appear. For example, I might say something like “This paper builds on the work of researchers like P, Q, and R, who have explored features of argumentative discourse in the classroom. However, I am extending this work to explore students’ later written productions, leveraging methods from X and Y in this new context.”
Where you’d like us to focus. On the next page is a list of some features of good academic writing. The list isn’t exhaustive, it’s just meant to get you thinking. But using those elements as exemplars or inspiration, give us 1-2 specific things you’d like us to focus on when reading your written work. It could be something like “Is the ‘So what’ of this work convincing?” or, “Is my review of the research on X clear? Is it apparent how my analytic coding scheme connects to prior work?”
Other relevant requirements or details. If you are working on a conference submission, send along the call for papers. If you’re working on something you’d like to end up in a certain journal, link to its Aims and Scope and let us know of any word limits, etc.