Action Plan (2020 – 2023)

 

	2020-2021		2021-2022		2022-2023
	1st semester		1st semester		1st semester
	Event	Title	Event	Title	Event	Title
September					14	Training session for Russian writing center directors and staff on the analysis of best practices in academic and research writing (applied in EU writing centers)
October	3	ANNUAL BOARD MEETING	8	ANNUAL BOARD MEETING	15	ANNUAL BOARD MEETING
			16	Conference “IV Academic Writing in a Global World: Current Challenges & Future Perspectives”
November					16	Tutorial "Introducing Scholarship Skills: Academic Writing"
December	4	Roundtable debate "Writing Center Pedagogy: EU & Russian Experiences & Practices"	9	Case-study workshop "Starting & Sustaining a Writing Center: How to Get Administrative Support from your university (the EU Best Practices)"	17	Webinar "Academic Writing: Institutional & Non-Institutional Support (Based on the EU Experience)"
January					18	Roundtable debate Language Policy in the European Higher Education System: “Internationalization” – or “Englishization”?
	2nd semester		2nd semester		2nd semester
April	5	Webinar "Practical Challenges of Writing Centers: Comparative Analysis of the EU & Russian Experiences"	11	Workshop "Academic writing by translingual writers in multilingual societies"
	15	Conference “III Academic Writing in a Global World: Current Challenges & Future Perspectives”
May			12	Roundtable debate "Changing Spaces: Writing Centers as ‘Agents of Change’ within the university"	20	Conference “Shaping Educational Policy on Academic Writing: Quality Assurance Strategies & Improvement Programs”
June			13	Professional development training "An Ideal Writing Center: In Search for the Right “Recipe”"	21	One-day workshop "Data-Driven Research in Writing Centers"

 

2020-2021

 

• October 3, 2020 – ANNUAL BOARD MEETING

The annual board meeting will review the successes, challenges, and changes within the organization over the past year, and set the direction for the upcoming year. The board members and the meeting attendees will discuss Jean Monnet project “Shaping Educational Policy on Academic Writing” to develop strategic decisions on its implementation and dissemination.

 

• December 4, 2020 – Roundtable debate “Writing Center Pedagogy: EU & Russian Experiences & Practices”

Building an effective writing center is difficult. “One-off” institutional initiatives often bring only temporary benefits. Attempts to close every benchmark and best-practice gap also end in disappointment. A sustainable writing center is among the most powerful assets a university can build. Sustained writing centers ensure the development of faculty’s professional competency in academic writing that is required to increase scholarly publications in peer-reviewed international journals indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. To help researchers acquire ESL academic writing competency, institutional writing centers should map out a specific “model” characterized by a distinct set of practices. Writing center leaders should identify the one that most closely matches their strategic aspirations. The trick then is to be truly great in a handful of practices rather than trying to master them all.

 

• April 5, 2021 – Webinar “Practical Challenges of Writing Centers: Comparative Analysis of the EU & Russian Experiences”

Newly established academic writing centers in Russian universities have to respond to both institutional and methodological challenges. At the core of these challenges is a lack of awareness among the Russian scholarly community of academic writing as a separate branch of scientific and methodological knowledge in addition to the insufficient number of specialists, inadequate training, and rare publications in this field. To better understand how writing centers function and what services they can provide to develop academic writing skills, academic writing experts, writing center faculty and staff need to study the world experiences, in particular, experiences of European writing centers to introduce best practices. The webinar participants will learn about the existing EU writing centers, their objectives, and the services they provide.

 

• April 15-17, 2021 – Conference “III Academic Writing in a Global World: Current Challenges & Future Perspectives”

The event is a good framework for ESL academic writing experts to work collaboratively, discuss what they observe in class or their writing centers, share expertise, educational experiences, and best practices and present to their like-minded colleagues the efforts that they found as most effective.

 

2021-2022

 

• October 8, 2021 – ANNUAL BOARD MEETING

The annual board meeting will review the successes, challenges, and changes within the organization over the past year, and set the direction for the upcoming year. The board members and the meeting attendees will outline the main activities undertaken by the members of the Association to disseminate and communicate the project. The board members will sum up the first year of the project implementation and revise strategies and approaches for the second year of the project in terms of its further development and dissemination.

 

• October 16-17, 2021 – Conference “IV Academic Writing in a Global World: Current Challenges & Future Perspectives”

The Conference will explore and problematize the possibilities and challenges of academic writing as a place of intersections. Such intersections may include academic writing across and beyond disciplinary audiences as well as the hybridization of academic writing genres. Other intersections would be academic writing as a site of intercultural communication, academic writing by translingual writers and in multilingual societies, academic writing in digitalized settings, including digital genres, and blended learning. Closely aligned with these potential intersections are questions concerning strategic partnerships with the EU universities in developing English-language academic writing competence in multicultural societies.

 

• December 9, 2021 – Case-study workshop “Starting & Sustaining a Writing Center: How to Get Administrative Support from your university (the EU Best Practices)”

Administrative support is essential to establish a writing center within the university structure. To secure this vital support as a part of the educational environment of educational and research institutions, several steps of development need to be formally addressed with institution officials.

 

• April 11, 2022 – Workshop “Academic writing by translingual writers in multilingual societies”

The workshop will encourage important discussions about the EU writing center’s audience, needs, purposes, development strategies, and tutoring pedagogy. The focus is to use these discussions to stimulate the participants’ thoughts and goals towards developing their writing center as a site of intercultural communication.

 

• May 12, 2022 – Roundtable debate “Changing Spaces: Writing Centers as ‘Agents of Change’ within the university”

Writing centers can be ‘agents of change’ and as sites of intercultural communication within the university. The character of writing centers as semi-autonomous units, where writing center consultants or peer tutors are not tied directly to the academic hierarchy, gives them a particular capacity to develop fruitful relationships with faculty, influence the design of writing assignments, and raise questions about how the ‘hidden curriculum’ of higher education enables and constrains access. The purpose of the event is to introduce Russian writing center faculty and staff to the EU writing centers and to ensure that Russian writing centers have access to higher education being engaged in designing university programs and services.

 

• June 13, 2022 – Professional development training “An Ideal Writing Center: In Search for the Right “Recipe””

The in-depth analysis of the EU and Russian context indicated that there are several combinations of distinct practices, or ‘recipes,’ that could be associated with the sustained success of writing centers. The training will encourage the participants to reflect on the EU writing centers and help them identify the “recipe” that most closely matches their strategic aspirations.

 

2022-2023

 

• September 14, 2022 – Training session for Russian writing center directors and staff on the analysis of best practices in academic and research writing (applied in EU writing centers)

During the training session, writing center directors and staff, as well as writing tutors, will analyze the EU and Russian best practices of writing centers and tutor training, discuss different variations of what a «Writing Center» is—whom it serves, how it can be staffed, the context in which it does its work, and its specific mission for that work. The training will encourage the participants to reflect on the EU writing centers and tutor training programs and help the participants identify the most appropriate “recipe” for the development of their writing centers and the implementation of various strategies for their tutor training programs.

 

• October 15, 2022 – ANNUAL BOARD MEETING

The annual board meeting will review the successes, challenges, and changes within the organization over the past year, and set the direction for the upcoming year. The board members and the meeting attendees will outline the main activities undertaken by the members of the Association to disseminate and communicate the project. The board members will sum up the second year of the project implementation and revise strategies and approaches for the third year of the project in terms of its further development and dissemination.

 

• November 16, 2022 – Tutorial “Introducing Scholarship Skills: Academic Writing”

The purpose of the tutorial is to consider how to engage and empower students by introducing scholarship skills in their first year at university. The key tasks are to: identify any themes, gaps, and issues for practice and select case studies of good practice in relation to introducing scholarship skills to students in their first year at university and provide some recommendations that would be of use to policy-makers, practitioners and students.

 

• December 17, 2022 – Webinar “Academic Writing: Institutional & Non-Institutional Support (Based on the EU Experience)”

The development of academic writing competence is a challenge that all Russian universities currently face. To cope better with this challenge, universities offer their researchers and Ph.D. students tuition on appropriate and effective academic writing through institutional provision on the basis of an academic writing center, and through non-institutional strategies on the basis of peer-collaboration and tuition. The webinar will cover issues concerning the initiation of projects to attract additional administrative support and financial resources to boost educational and scientific activities of writing centers.

 

• January 18, 2023 – Roundtable debate Language Policy in the European Higher Education System: “Internationalization” – or “Englishization”?

The roundtable debate will focus on language policy initiatives at the European Union where English is playing an increasingly important role as the global academic lingua franca. Thus, English is used to internationalize the European Higher Education and to become more competitive in the global market for students, scholars, and researchers. This trend is not without its repercussions on the use and status of home-language as a language of science and scholarship and the quality of teaching and learning in a foreign language. The roundtable debate will address issues related to teaching English academic writing in the second-language classroom. The participants will have the opportunity to discuss and consider different responses to the changing higher education sector both in the EU and Russia.

 

• May 20-24, 2023 – Conference “Shaping Educational Policy on Academic Writing: Quality Assurance Strategies & Improvement Programs”

The exchange visits are intended to benefit all participants through an open exchange of ideas, knowledge, and sound practices. Visits will foster mutual learning, not only of explicit verbalized ideas, but also tacit knowledge embedded in practice. They will help forge and strengthen networks linking practitioners of academic writing and writing center professionals with shared concerns and ideas. With the goal of promoting EU best practices in academic writing and writing center scholarship, the exchange visits will be exploring the development, management, role, and function of academic writing centers on Russian university campuses.

 

• June 21, 2023 – One-day workshop “Data-Driven Research in Writing Centers”

In this webinar, participants will engage in practical aspects of conducting data-driven research in writing centers. Participants will discuss research problems and questions relevant to their writing centers or the teaching of academic writing in general. They will share ideas about using data collected in their writing centers to conduct research. They will also focus on methods (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, mixed) that may be used to conduct writing research. Finally, participants will generate ideas about possible research collaborations with writing center administrators and tutors across institutions, within and outside Russia. One-day workshop  (morning session would focus on posing a research problem and question; afternoon session on methods and implementation).