tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/academic-writing-23040/articlesAcademic writing – The Conversation2024-03-20T19:25:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244862024-03-20T19:25:08Z2024-03-20T19:25:08ZHow a first-year university writing course for Indigenous students fostered skills and belonging<p>Academic writing courses have historically served as a kind of <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/gatekeepers-or-greeters-we-must-demystify-university-firstgen-students">gate-keeping measure</a>. In North America and other settler colonial societies, such courses have traditionally imparted skills and knowledge for succeeding in university as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-universities-relate-with-students-changed-in-the-past-century-but-a-duty-of-care-remains-211255">institution that has privileged Eurocentric forms of knowledge and served elite members of society</a>. </p>
<p>As anti-racist educators like George Sefa Dei and colleagues explain, settler colonialism “imposed colonial theories of knowledge that privileged and superiorized Eurocentric knowledges <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84201-7_3">and denied, denigrated and invalidated Indigenous knowledges …</a>.” Eurocentric educational ideology “continues to inform what is considered formal education in Canada.”</p>
<p>Since fall 2021, the University of Victoria (UVic) has offered a section of a foundational <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/atwp/index.php">introduction to writing course</a> specifically for Indigenous students. The general foundational writing course meets UVic’s <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/atwp/program/academic-writing-requirement/index.php">academic writing requirement</a>, so most students will take it in their first or second year.</p>
<p>We designed a specific academic writing course that introduces Indigenous students to the conventions of academic writing and the <a href="https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/iipj/article/view/7418">skills they need to navigate the institution</a>. When we identified <a href="https://teachanywhere.uvic.ca/teach-a-course/intended-learning-outcomes">“learning outcomes” for this course</a> — what we wanted the outcome of students having taken the course to be — among these, we envisioned that at the end of the course, students would feel a sense <a href="https://diversity.cornell.edu/belonging/sense-belonging#:%7E:text=Belonging%20is%20the%20feeling%20of,their%20authentic%20self%20to%20work">of belonging</a> at the university. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-taken-thousands-of-years-but-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-traditional-knowledge-90291">It's taken thousands of years, but Western science is finally catching up to Traditional Knowledge</a>
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<h2>Why a writing course?</h2>
<p>Loren Gaudet, the lead author of this story, is a rhetoric and writing studies white settler scholar who teaches first-year students writing. She focuses on teaching students to understand academic writing as a <a href="https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/from-combat-to-conversation-and-community-reimagining-university-writing/">scholarly conversation</a> they’re entering. </p>
<p>First-year writing courses provide a <a href="https://theconversation.com/writing-is-a-technology-that-restructures-thought-and-in-an-ai-age-universities-need-to-teach-it-more-219482">necessary introduction into the world of academic communication</a>. They equip students with the skills and confidence to add their voices to scholarly discourse.</p>
<p>By leveraging an existing academic writing course that meets the academic writing requirement, the writing course for Indigenous students provided a space to cultivate belonging for Indigenous students who have historically been and continue to be systematically <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/">excluded from post-secondary education</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation-universities-and-schools-must-acknowledge-how-colonial-education-has-reproduced-anti-indigenous-racism-123315">National Day for Truth & Reconciliation: Universities and schools must acknowledge how colonial education has reproduced anti-Indigenous racism</a>
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<h2>Creating the course</h2>
<p>Lydia Toorenburgh, the co-author of this story, worked with many Indigenous students through their studies and staff roles at UVic. Toorenburgh is a mixed settler and Bungi-Metis Two-Spirit person who has served as an Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator at UVic and is a PhD student in anthropology and Indigenous governance. </p>
<p>Toorenburgh learned many Indigenous students struggle to navigate post-secondary education because these institutions require skills, knowledge and ways of knowing that are not intuitive, not readily taught <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jamerindieduc.54.1.0154">and stem from a colonial orientation</a>. </p>
<p>Toorenburgh wondered how to deliver to Indigenous students:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/jnep/article/view/17306">knowledge of campus supports and confidence to access these supports</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>the skills needed to meet the academic and administrative demands of university;</p></li>
<li><p>the feeling that they belong on campus and are valued members of the community. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>All of these factors <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jamerindieduc.54.1.0154">support Indigenous student success</a>. </p>
<p>Toorenburgh recognized the potential of the first-year writing course to deliver these learning outcomes because it is a requirement and a foundational skills course.</p>
<h2>‘Belonging’ as learning outcome</h2>
<p>By including belonging as a learning outcome, we signalled to ourselves and our students that building community was a valued part of our class time together — and an intentional and deliberate undertaking. We intentionally fostered belonging and community-building in varying ways. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-voices-new-grade-11-english-courses-can-support-reconciliation-and-resurgence-by-centring-indigenous-literature-199292">First Voices: New Grade 11 English courses can support reconciliation and resurgence by centring Indigenous literature</a>
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<p>We began every class with a “round”: we sat in a circle together and each person had a chance to share how they were feeling. In an institution that can often be unfriendly and is full of overt and covert <a href="https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/indigenous-students-systemic-barriers-higher-education">barriers for Indigenous students</a>, it is radical to create a class environment built on personal connection and belonging.</p>
<p>We brought representatives for Indigenous-specific supports into the classroom to meet the students and talk with them, rather than just offering links to resources <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320959979">in the syllabus</a> or course. In other words, we prioritized proximity and access to supports and relationships as essential factors in cultivating a sense of belonging for our students. </p>
<p>We also <a href="https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/">adopted an anti-oppressive grading practice</a>. For us, this meant that student grades were <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/dwr/index.php/dwr/article/view/975/873">determined by how many assignments the students completed over the term</a>. Students earned an “A” by <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/atwp/current-students/grading/index.php">exceeding expectations</a> and proposing their own additional projects. For example, two of our students created a podcast, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5L3Ux6InOxmYS9f0TzwQWs">“The Power of Indigenous Kinship</a>.” </p>
<h2>Student responses</h2>
<p>To measure the impact of this course, we surveyed the students at the end of each term. Ninety-one per cent of students strongly agreed or agreed that being in this course section with other Indigenous students made them feel more comfortable in the classroom. Ninety-three per cent strongly agreed or agreed that this made them more comfortable at UVic. </p>
<p>In response to the question: “What worked?” one student wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I loved having the community that was created in our classroom. I felt a lot of support and love, a very safe space for me.” </p>
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<p>These results show that making time and space for belonging has had a direct impact on these Indigenous students.</p>
<h2>Dedicated spaces</h2>
<p>Spaces that are dedicated to <a href="https://www.univcan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/enhancing-indigenous-student-access-at-canadian-universities-june-2016accessible-1.pdf">Indigenous students enhance their learning and success</a>. <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/aboriginalpeoples/events/sfu-news--aboriginal-editions-/2022-aboriginal-peoples-supplement/new-burnaby-and-surrey-spaces-enhance-student-experience-work.html">Many institutions</a> are creating dedicated spaces like <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/services/indigenous/house/index.php">UVic’s First Peoples House</a>, where the writing course serving Indigenous students has been held, but we argue that we can extend this work beyond resource centres. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-decolonize-education-where-classes-are-held-matters-165937">Want to decolonize education? Where classes are held matters</a>
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<p>A writing course for Indigenous students, as both a first-year and requirement-satisfying course, provides the opportunity <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-universities-need-homerooms-106299">for a homeroom-style class</a>. </p>
<p>Here, instructors can deliver essential curriculum (including practices to foster belonging), introduce students to key resources — and identify and intervene in student struggles. </p>
<p>Finally, we encourage collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff, instructors and administrators to be innovative. In so doing, it’s possible to work with present (and often restricted) resources to design and implement creative initiatives for decolonization.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s possible to work with restricted resources to design and implement creative initiatives to serve the particular needs of Indigenous students at university.Loren Gaudet, Assistant Teaching Professor, Academic and Technical Writing Program, University of VictoriaLydia A. I. Toorenburgh, PhD Student, Anthropology, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2001952023-02-28T19:26:40Z2023-02-28T19:26:40ZChatGPT killed the student essay? Philosophers call bullshit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512058/original/file-20230223-26-3tye6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C59%2C5000%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">That students can cheat more efficiently with ChatGPT does not warrant claims about the death of the student essay.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/chatgpt-killed-the-student-essay-philosophers-call-bullshit" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Since <a href="https://chat.openai.com/">ChatGPT</a> was released, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04397-7">many commentators</a> are sounding the alarm about an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/04/ai-bot-chatgpt-stuns-academics-with-essay-writing-skills-and-usability">suggesting that</a> professors will soon be out of a job, or that the student <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-ai-writing-college-student-essays/672371/">essay is dead</a>. </p>
<p>This is reactionary and misguided. ChatGPT, by its very nature, cannot do the kinds of things we ought to want student essays to do. </p>
<p>ChatGPT does not, and cannot, like other AI, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262035248/giving-a-damn/">give a damn</a>: In the words of philosopher John Haugeland, AI cannot possibly give a damn, as nothing matters to it.</p>
<p>ChatGPT does, however, pose a unique set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to education and assessment — some of which ChatGPT has not so much created as brought to light with new urgency. </p>
<p>Beyond <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cheating-at-school-is-easier-than-everand-its-rampant-11620828004">existing shortcuts</a> facilitated by online tools that predate ChatGPT, students and educators may have lost sight of some of the skills and values that essay writing is meant to develop — <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043045/the-promise-of-artificial-intelligence/">namely, judgment and</a> giving a damn.</p>
<h2>Shortcuts already abound</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A ghost is seen above the words ghostwriter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511761/original/file-20230222-28-4abfpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There will always be students who use shortcuts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Does this require educators to stop to think about — and potentially change — some of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/technology/chatgpt-schools-teachers.html">our teaching and assessment</a> <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/some-educators-embrace-chatgpt-as-a-new-teaching-tool">practices</a>? Absolutely. </p>
<p>Does ChatGPT signal the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/17/chatgpt-students-end-of-civilization/">death of critical thinking</a>? Quite the opposite. </p>
<p>Let’s first consider the landscape before ChatGPT arrived on the scene. Online textual summaries and ready-made analyses offering shortcuts to actual reading and understanding have been readily accessible.</p>
<p>Essay mills are easy to find, and as <em>The Washington Post</em> reports, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/another-problem-with-shifting-education-online-a-rise-in-cheating/2020/08/07/1284c9f6-d762-11ea-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html">online tests have also meant a booming business for companies that sell homework and test answers, including Chegg and Course Hero</a>.”</p>
<p>There will always be students who <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-university-students-cheating-exams/">use these shortcuts</a>. Teachers and administrators will do their best to catch them, but some will inevitably get away with it.</p>
<h2>Novel feature of ChatGPT</h2>
<p>A genuinely novel feature of ChatGPT, however, is the speed and ease with which students can take shortcuts to bypass the difficult processes of reading, understanding, thinking and writing. </p>
<p>Before, students may have had to browse multiple websites or shared cloud documents and piece together their findings. Now, a series of prompts from their smartphone will do. </p>
<p>But why should speed and ease be the change that make a difference? The efficiency with which students can now cheat does not warrant claims about the death of the student essay. </p>
<p>These problems have been around since long before the arrival of ChatGPT. They’re just harder to ignore now. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A student seen earnestly working at a laptop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511809/original/file-20230222-572-qqrv15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Desire to bypass the difficult processes of reading, understanding, thinking and writing has been around since before ChatGPT.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Tim Gouw/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No understanding: a bullshitter?</h2>
<p>What about the essays that ChatGPT produces?</p>
<p>Yes, ChatGPT can often cogently answer straightforward essay prompts, but these essays show no regard for understanding, judgment or truth. When we asked ChatGPT to explain itself to a group of philosophy students, it readily admits “it doesn’t have any understanding of the world, beliefs or moral values.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unlike-with-academics-and-reporters-you-cant-check-when-chatgpts-telling-the-truth-198463">Unlike with academics and reporters, you can't check when ChatGPT's telling the truth</a>
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<p>This had led some commentators <a href="https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/chatgpt-is-a-bullshit-generator-but">to suggest</a> ChatGPT is a “bullshitter” in the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit">philosophical sense</a> of that term: According to the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, whereas a liar must to some extent be responding to the truth, the bullshitter has no regard for truth or falsity — their “eye is not on the facts at all.”</p>
<p>The bullshitter merely <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web">makes things up</a> as they see fit, to suit their purposes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Screenshot showing a query explain ChatGPT to a group of third-year philosophy students." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512107/original/file-20230223-20-6g7pvo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ChatGPT readily admits it has no understanding of the world, beliefs or moral values.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Dylan J. White)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>AI does not care what it says</h2>
<p>It is tempting to see ChatGPT in this light, but this doesn’t go far enough. True, ChatGPT has no regard for the truth. <a href="https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/how-chatgpt-actually-works/">How could it</a>? </p>
<p>It’s not just that ChatGPT is a bullshitter with no regard for the truth, but that it has no regard for anything. </p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/20/opinion/chatgpt-taught-me-something-powerful-about-human-collaboration/">Evan Selinger</a> puts this well: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“OpenAI can’t make a technology that truly cares because that requires consciousness, inner experiences, an independent perspective and emotions. To care, you need to put things in perspective, offer respect, take offense when appropriate and provide camaraderie.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is why ChatGPT, by its very nature, cannot do the kinds of things that we ought to want student essays to do. The “essays” it produces have no regard for the truth, demonstrate no understanding and have not even a hint of caring about what is said.</p>
<h2>Genuine stakes</h2>
<p>What ought we want a student essay to do? What writing skills are valuable for students to develop? There are many plausible answers, all of which will vary from classroom to classroom. </p>
<p>But overall, a compelling answer is captured by what Brian Cantwell Smith, a philosopher of artificial intelligence, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043045/the-promise-of-artificial-intelligence/">calls judgment</a> — a form of thought that is deliberative, open-minded, grounded by caring and responsible action and context appropriate. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A student seen writing at a laptop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512057/original/file-20230223-18-l65mdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caring about what you write requires emotions, an independent perspective and being aware of what’s at stake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Judgment requires the agent to be normatively situated within a world — in other words, to care about itself in relation to the people and things around it.
As Cantwell Smith <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043045/the-promise-of-artificial-intelligence/">writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Only with existential commitment, genuine stakes and passionate resolve to hold things accountable to being in the world can a system (human or machine) genuinely…distinguish truth from falsity, respond appropriately to context and shoulder responsibility.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is, understanding and judgment require giving a damn — and this is what teachers and our society at large ought to want student essays to reflect.</p>
<h2>Raising the standards on being human</h2>
<p>As Cantwell Smith asks: “can articulating a conception of judgment provide us with inspiration on how we might use the advent of AI to raise the standards on what it is to be human?” </p>
<p>What we have argued here suggests the answer is a clear and unequivocal yes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200195/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua August (Gus) Skorburg has received funding from OpenAI. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dylan J. White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We ought to want student essays to reflect understanding, judgment and caring, something beyond ChatGPT.Dylan J. White, Philosophy PhD Student, University of GuelphJoshua August (Gus) Skorburg, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1989572023-02-14T19:45:59Z2023-02-14T19:45:59ZWhy using AI tools like ChatGPT in my MBA innovation course is expected and not cheating<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509889/original/file-20230213-5048-qgzqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C22%2C4860%2C2482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">But if students misrepresent or omit sources, including generative AI, that's a problem. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I teach managing technological innovation in Simon Fraser University’s Management of Technology MBA program. Thanks to the explosion of generative artificial intelligence, I’m rewriting my 2023 syllabus and assignments. </p>
<p>No matter our industry or field, we should regularly review our tools and workflows. New tools, like AI, are excellent triggers for this assessment. Sorting out how best to adjust our work, as per the values and existing norms of different fields, takes a systematic approach. </p>
<p>My research examines how companies can adjust how they use talent, technology and technique to hit work targets and stay aligned with the times — what I’ve <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08956308.2022.2093081">called thinking in 5T</a>.</p>
<p>Educators in MBA programs, who are concerned with building students’ professional capacities, can also use this lens to support the critical thinking that students need. We can help students consider how and when to use AI in their academic and professional lives.</p>
<h2>Abrupt availability of AI tools</h2>
<p><a href="https://chat.openai.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a href="https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/">DALL-E</a> and <a href="https://writesonic.com">Writesonic</a> are examples of publicly available generative AI. These are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2022.3192720">“generative” in that humans provide a prompt and the AI outputs text or images based on machine learning</a>. </p>
<p>I didn’t think to mention generative AI in my September 2022 syllabus. Class discussions included my expectation that students would use <a href="https://www.grammarly.com/">Grammarly</a> or other proofreading tools to support their professional writing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen sitting around a table collaborating." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509891/original/file-20230213-25-ar7h5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s important for innovation students to learn how and when to use AI in academic and professional life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kampus Productions)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We discussed different citation styles for business writing and how incorrectly citing sources <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114667187784442718">can negatively affect one’s career</a>. </p>
<p>Some students asked whether Grammarly’s more sophisticated ability to rewrite sentences was a problem. I said, no, it’s an innovation course and we should use the tools we have.</p>
<h2>Considering social and technical aspects</h2>
<p>The 5T framework is my modernized presentation of <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Evolution_of_Socio_technical_Systems/19d1QgAACAAJ?hl=en">sociotechnical systems theory</a> — a theory describing how workers and leaders must manage social and technical aspects of work to achieve performance and well-being. </p>
<p>Thinking in 5T means you set a <em>target</em> and then consider:</p>
<ul>
<li>the <em>times</em> (context) in which you make a decision;</li>
<li>available <em>talent</em> (knowledge, skills, abilities, human reactions, limitations);</li>
<li><em>technology</em> (from AI and smart watches to shovels and conference room furniture);</li>
<li><em>technique</em> (practices, workflows and so on) as you look for the right balance of all these elements.</li>
</ul>
<p>Research suggests that people who are more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-019-09619-4">systems savvy</a> have a greater ability to see the connections across these different domains and construct synergies appropriate for their work. </p>
<h2>No silver bullet</h2>
<p>Thinking in 5T means you never expect a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.1987.1663532">silver bullet</a>” change to work: for example, just blocking ChatGPT <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-schools-colleges-ban-plagiarism-misinformation-education-2023-1">on an organization’s network with no other adjustments</a>. Instead, you look to manage all aspects of your human and technological variables.</p>
<p>My target is for my students to improve their ability to identify and evaluate existing innovations and create valuable new ones. </p>
<p>To date, my syllabus has said “your final submission must be your individual work and words,” but now I will need to clarify what this means. </p>
<h2>Learning how to use AI</h2>
<p>I agree with <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/picture-limitless-creativity-ai-image-generators/">Kevin Kelly of <em>Wired</em> that asking ChatGPT how to do things — in technical terms, writing AI prompts — requires work and expertise</a>. We also need to be careful consumers of what the generative AI produce.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/12/generative-ai-brings-wrongness-at-scale/">Generative AI are often wrong</a>. Both students of innovation and business professionals will need to understand how the tools generate responses to assure factual answers and correct references.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unlike-with-academics-and-reporters-you-cant-check-when-chatgpts-telling-the-truth-198463">Unlike with academics and reporters, you can't check when ChatGPT's telling the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Beyond fact-checking, my students must use critical thinking and show they can apply course concepts. As I teach innovation skills, we can cover how to engage with ChatGPT and other generative AI effectively. </p>
<p>My innovation students create personalized templates that allow them to take course concepts, apply them in the real world and improve the application of these concepts throughout their careers. How might students write an AI prompt for ChatGPT to help them use <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Design_Thinking_Toolbox/yGrTDwAAQBAJ">design thinking</a> in their work?</p>
<p>An effective ChatGPT prompt would be: “Create a playbook to support design thinking. Include alternatives for expert versus novice team members and teams working virtually versus face to face.” </p>
<p>Such a prompt guides ChatGPT to return a response drawing on both the social and technical aspects of work — the thinking in 5T approach from my course. </p>
<h2>Academic integrity</h2>
<p>While academic discussions are ongoing about the ethical and knowledge implications of using generative AI, academic integrity does provide some firm boundaries. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unlike-with-academics-and-reporters-you-cant-check-when-chatgpts-telling-the-truth-198463">Unlike with academics and reporters, you can't check when ChatGPT's telling the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For example, at Simon Fraser University, students must demonstrate “<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html">a commitment not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception</a>.” </p>
<p>In my course, the notion of “individual work” must change. </p>
<p>I’ll be adjusting the assignments and requiring an appendix describing the toolkit and practices students use. Using AI is not cheating in my course, but misrepresenting your sources is.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aizFfLbY2kI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CBC News video.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Work doesn’t exist in a vacuum</h2>
<p>The AI will get better, and there will be more of them. Guidelines in work and education need to keep pace and be thoughtfully aligned to how knowledge is constructed in different fields.</p>
<p>We’re learning that some journals <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adg7879">won’t accept AI as credited authors</a>. Other publishers have announced that while you can’t list ChatGPT as an author, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/26/science-journals-ban-listing-of-chatgpt-as-co-author-on-papers">AI tools can be used in some stages of preparation, as long as you disclose this in</a> the manuscript.</p>
<p>We need <a href="https://apastyle.apa.org/">the various</a> <a href="https://style.mla.org/">manuals of style</a> to update their rules to include work generated by an AI. Given the pace of AI change, writers may need to highlight the specific versions of the AI they use (much as the <a href="https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/wikipedia-references">APA Style requests dates for Wikipedia articles</a>).</p>
<p>I like an approach some photographers use: share your tools and critical settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terri L. Griffith receives funding in support of her research at Simon Fraser University from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Negotiation and Team Resources Institute. Prof. Griffith is a member of the Academy of Management, INFORMS, and the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals. She does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article and has disclosed no other relevant affiliations.</span></em></p>Research about both social and technical aspects of work can guide critical thinking about when and how business leaders and MBA students might use generative AI.Terri L. Griffith, Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1604812021-11-04T14:55:59Z2021-11-04T14:55:59ZArtificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427330/original/file-20211019-18-1kfzc43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C316%2C6399%2C4407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If a piece of writing was 49 per cent written by AI, with the remaining 51 per cent written by a human, is this original work? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The dramatic rise of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has spotlit concerns about the role of technology in <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/07/1006132/software-algorithms-proctoring-online-tests-ai-ethics/">exam surveillance</a> — and also <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031255390/reports-of-cheating-at-colleges-soar-during-the-pandemic">in student cheating</a>. </p>
<p>Some universities have reported <a href="https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/more-students-cheating-during-online-classes-universities-say-1.5234890">more cheating</a> during the pandemic, and such concerns are unfolding in a climate where <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-robots-write-machine-learning-produces-dazzling-results-but-some-assembly-is-still-required-146090">technologies that allow for the automation of writing</a> continue to improve.</p>
<p>Over the past two years, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/10/05/what-is-gpt-3-and-why-is-it-revolutionizing-artificial-intelligence">the ability of artificial intelligence</a> to generate writing has leapt <a href="https://www.itbusinessedge.com/development/what-is-gpt-3">forward significantly</a>, particularly with the development of what’s known as the language generator GPT-3. With this, companies such as <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/12/google-trained-a-trillion-parameter-ai-language-model/">Google</a>, <a href="https://analyticsindiamag.com/nvidia-microsoft-introduce-new-language-model-mt-nlg-with-530-billion-parameters-leaves-gpt-3-behind/">Microsoft and NVIDIA</a> can now produce <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahmayer/2021/01/02/revolutionary-nlp-model-gpt-3-poised-to-redefine-ai-and-next-generation-of-startups/?sh=baed6d677b3c">“human-like” text</a>.</p>
<p>AI-generated writing has raised the stakes of how universities and schools will gauge <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-016-0013-y">what constitutes academic misconduct, such as plagiarism</a>. As scholars with an interest <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-018-0028-7">in academic integrity</a> and the intersections of work, society and educators’ labour, we believe that <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/what-happens-when-a-machine-can-write-as-well-as-an-academic/">educators and parents should be, at the very least, paying close attention to these significant developments</a>.</p>
<h2>AI & academic writing</h2>
<p>The use of technology in academic writing is already widespread. For example, many <a href="https://edscoop.com/ohio-university-anti-plagiarism-analytics/">universities already use text-based plagiarism detectors like Turnitin</a>, while students might use <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/14/grammarly-sdk-beta-lets-developers-embed-text-editing-into-any-web-app/">Grammarly</a>, a cloud-based writing assistant. Examples of writing support include automatic text generation, extraction, prediction, mining, form-filling, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-018-0036-7">paraphrasing</a>, translation and transcription.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-an-ai-world-we-need-to-teach-students-how-to-work-with-robot-writers-157508">In an AI world we need to teach students how to work with robot writers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Advancements in AI technology have led to new tools, products and services <a href="https://copyblogger.com/algorithm-writing/">being offered to writers</a> to improve <a href="https://rytr.me/">content and efficiency</a>. As these improve, soon <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3">entire articles</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/grad-student-neural-network-write-papers">essays might be</a> generated and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamgeller/2021/04/05/can-ai-computers-write-essays-better-than-you/">written entirely by artificial intelligence</a>. In schools, the implications of such developments will undoubtedly shape the future of learning, writing and teaching.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A girl at a computer surrounded by zeros and ones as binary code." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427914/original/file-20211021-17-1gc1ogm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What if an essay was 100 per cent written by AI, but a student did much of the coding themselves?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Misconduct concerns already widespread</h2>
<p>Research has revealed that <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113463">concerns over academic misconduct are already widespread across institutions higher education in Canada</a> and internationally. </p>
<p>In Canada, there is little data regarding the rates of misconduct. Research published in 2006 based on <a href="https://doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.v36i2.183537">data from mostly undergraduate students at 11 higher education institutions</a> found 53 per cent reported having engaged in one or more instances of serious cheating on written work, which was defined as copying material without footnoting, copying material almost word for word, submitting work done by someone else, fabricating or falsifying a bibliography, submitting a paper they either bought or got from someone else for free. </p>
<p>Academic misconduct is in all likelihood <a href="https://theconversation.com/cheating-may-be-under-reported-across-canadas-universities-and-colleges-129292">under-reported across Canadian higher education institutions</a>. </p>
<p>There are different types of violations of academic integrity, including <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A6237P">plagiarism</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-unite-against-the-academic-black-market-85232">contract cheating</a> (where students hire other people to write their papers) and exam cheating, <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-does-getting-help-on-an-assignment-turn-into-cheating-120215">among others</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, with technology, students can use their ingenuity and entrepreneurialism to cheat. These concerns are also applicable to faculty members, academics and writers in other fields, bringing new concerns surrounding academic integrity and AI such as:</p>
<ul>
<li> If a piece of writing was 49 per cent written by AI, with the remaining 51 per cent written by a human, is this considered original work? </li>
<li> What if an essay was 100 per cent written by AI, but a student did some of the coding themselves?</li>
<li> What qualifies as “AI assistance” as opposed to “academic cheating”?</li>
<li> Do the same rules apply to students as they would to academics and researchers? </li>
</ul>
<p>We are asking these questions in <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113569">our own research</a>, and we know that in the face of all this, educators will be required to consider how writing can be effectively assessed or evaluated as these technologies improve. </p>
<h2>Augmenting or diminishing integrity?</h2>
<p>At the moment, little guidance, policy or oversight is available regarding technology, AI and academic integrity for teachers and educational leaders. </p>
<p>Over the past year, COVID-19 has pushed more students towards online learning — a sphere where teachers may become less familiar with their own students and thus, potentially, their writing. </p>
<p>While it remains impossible to predict the future of these technologies and their implications in education, we can attempt to discern some of the larger trends and trajectories that will impact teaching, learning and research. </p>
<h2>Technology & automation in education</h2>
<p>A key concern moving forward is the apparent movement towards the increased <a href="https://www.bustedcubicle.com/features/industry-disrupted/education">automation of education</a> where educational technology companies offer commodities such as writing tools as proposed solutions for the various “problems” within education. </p>
<p>An example of this is automated assessment of student work, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68449-5_25">automated grading of student writing</a>. Numerous commercial products already exist for automated grading, though the ethics of these technologies are yet to be fully explored by scholars and educators.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/online-exam-monitoring-can-invade-privacy-and-erode-trust-at-universities-149335">Online exam monitoring can invade privacy and erode trust at universities</a>
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<hr>
<p>Overall, the traditional landscape surrounding academic integrity and authorship is being rapidly reshaped by technological developments. Such technological developments also spark concerns about a shift of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520948931">professional control away from educators</a> and ever-increasing <a href="https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/186587">new expectations</a> of digital literacy in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-universities-can-really-help-phd-grads-get-jobs-118241">precarious working environments</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/precarious-employment-in-education-impacts-workers-families-and-students-115766">Precarious employment in education impacts workers, families and students</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>These complexities, concerns and questions will require further thought and discussion. Educational stakeholders at all levels will be required to respond and rethink definitions as well as values surrounding plagiarism, originality, academic ethics and academic labour in the very near future.</p>
<p><em>The authors would like to sincerely thank Ryan Morrison, from George Brown College, who provided significant expertise, advice and assistance with the development of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What’s judged to be plagiarism may shift as students rely on more sophisticated forms of technology for writing support.Michael Mindzak, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Brock UniversitySarah Elaine Eaton, Educational Leader in Residence, Academic Integrity and Assistant Professor, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1537612021-03-15T12:53:31Z2021-03-15T12:53:31ZHip-hop professor looks to open doors with world’s first peer-reviewed rap album<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388885/original/file-20210310-15-189tilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C1997%2C1227&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hip-hop professor A.D. Carson</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Addison</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a rap artist who is also a professor of hip-hop, I always make it a point to have my songs reviewed by other artists I admire.</p>
<p>So when I released “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372">i used to love to dream</a>” – my latest album – in 2020, I turned to Phonte Coleman, one half of the <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/little-brother-interview-phonte-big-pooh-drake-influence-reunion.html">trailblazing</a> rap group Little Brother.</p>
<p>“Just listened to the album. S— is dope!” Phonte texted me after he checked it out. “Salute!”</p>
<p>I responded with sincere appreciation for his encouraging words. I told him they meant a lot to me, especially coming from him. </p>
<p>“Nah, bro. The bars are on point,” he replied. “Much love and respect.”</p>
<p>This informal conversation with a <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/whos-drakes-favorite-rapper-like-for-real/">highly esteemed rapper</a> – one whose work I’ve studied and hold in high regard – is perhaps the most resounding affirmation I can ask for as an artist.</p>
<p>The situation is similar in academia. That is, in order to establish oneself as a serious scholar, an academic must get their work – typically some sort of written product – published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is a journal in which works are evaluated by others in a given field to ensure their relevance and quality.</p>
<p>As a rap artist and academic, I wondered if I could do the same thing with my new album. Could I get my album “published” through an academic press?</p>
<p>Thankfully, I have discovered that the answer was “yes.”
In August 2020, my album became what Michigan Publishing described as the “<a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">first ever peer-reviewed rap album published by a university press</a>.” This is a development that I believe could open doors for scholars from all kinds of different backgrounds – including but not limited to hip-hop scholars – to contribute new forms of knowledge.</p>
<h2>New methods</h2>
<p>“With this new form of scholarship comes a new approach to the peer review and production process,” the University of Michigan Press <a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">stated</a> in an article about my work.</p>
<p>But in order to get a peer-reviewed rap album, it’s not like I just went into the studio, rapped over some beats and hoped for the best. I presented liner notes and created a documentary about how I made the album, which I refer to as a “mixtap/e/ssay” – an amalgamation of the words “<a href="https://artists.spotify.com/blog/the-significance-of-the-mixtape-in-the-streaming-era">mixtape</a>,” which is a sampling of an array of select songs, and “essay.” I also submitted articles that help explain how the music relates to certain academic conversations, events in society and my own life.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man records an album next to a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘i used to love to dream’ is a semi-autobiographic take on Carson’s life growing up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amy Jackson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, since the album is semi-autobiographical and I am from Decatur, Illinois, I note how in May 2020, my hometown was listed as America’s <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/south-west-fastest-growing.html">third-fastest shrinking city</a>. Since my album deals with Black life, I note how USA Today ranked Decatur as one of “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/11/16/racial-disparity-cities-worst-metro-areas-black-americans/38460961/">the 15 worst cities in America for Black people</a>” in terms of various metrics, such as household income, educational attainment, homeownership, incarceration and life spans.</p>
<p>My album – which is free and open source – deals with topics that range from race and justice to identity and citizenship.</p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 500px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">‘i used to love to dream’ by A.D. Carson.</a></iframe>
<h2>Confronting societal ills</h2>
<p>In the lyrics, I reflect from where I am now – in my career as an assistant professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville – on my memories growing up and living in the central Illinois town. </p>
<p>The content of the album demonstrates this, covering issues like the war on drugs and its legacy in the 1980s and 1990s and contrasting it with the current opioid crisis on the song “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.7">crack, usa</a>”; the seeming inevitability of police killings of Black people and how we might prepare ourselves and our loved ones on “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.8">just in case</a>”; and the trap of incarceration and institutionalization presented on “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.10">nword gem</a>.” It also provides space for processing mental health matters like trauma, alienation, alcoholism and depression with tracks like “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.6">ampersand</a>,” “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.9">stage fright</a>” and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.12">asterisk</a>.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2HBw0Wpka5o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>I published my album with University of Michigan Press because I believe it’s important that hip-hop – and hip-hop scholarship – occupies a space that’s not an “exotic other” and, instead, functions as a way of knowing, similar to, but distinct from, other resources such as a peer-reviewed paper or book.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of students sit on desks while using their laptops in a classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Professor A.D. Carson and students in the Rap Lab at the University of Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miguel 'MiG' Martinez</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to review my album as an academic work, the academic publisher had to “come up with appropriate questions for the evaluation of a sonic, rather than written, work.”</p>
<p>“The press’s standard peer review questions consider purpose, organization, and audience,” the University of Michigan Press has <a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">stated</a>. “While many of those general themes were captured in the questions developed for ‘i used to love to dream,’ the process for coming up with new questions was much more collaborative.”</p>
<h2>Is higher ed ready?</h2>
<p>I must admit – both before and during my doctoral studies – I was skeptical of the formal peer-review process. My thought was, what is the university to ask hip-hop to prove itself?</p>
<p>But my skepticism faded once I saw the responses from the anonymous scholars who reviewed my album. Based on their insightful feedback, I got the sense that they truly understood Black music and Black rhetoric. They encouraged me to consider how to present the album online in a way that would help audiences better understand the content, which is part of the reason I included the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.4">short documentary</a> about the making of the album.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>This is not my first academic foray using rap. I actually <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/15/537274235/after-rapping-his-dissertation-a-d-carson-is-uvas-new-hip-hop-professor">earned my Ph.D.</a> for writing a <a href="http://phd.aydeethegreat.com">rap album</a>.</p>
<p>I appreciate that hip-hop is sometimes celebrated in the academic world, but it seems to me that a lot of the excitement focuses on hip-hop as a particular kind of content rather than what it teaches people about other things in the world, many of which aren’t hip-hop.</p>
<p>For me, hip-hop is like a telescope, and the topics I discuss are like celestial bodies and galaxies. Taking that astronomical analogy a step farther, I would ask: Does it make sense to spend more time talking about the telescope that brought those faraway objects into focus and a sharper view? Or should more time be devoted to discussing the actual phenomena that the telescope enables people to see?</p>
<p>I can fully understand and appreciate how hip-hop – being not just a telescope but a powerful telescope – would generate a fair amount of discussion as a magnifier. At the same time, at some point society should be able to both focus on the potency of the lens of hip-hop and also concentrate on what hip-hop brings into view.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can college professors rap their way into academic publishing? One professor makes an album to prove they can.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1471032020-11-24T04:56:34Z2020-11-24T04:56:34ZSaying more with less: 4 ways grammatical metaphor improves academic writing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369528/original/file-20201116-19-fp15i1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Young children often write as they speak. But the way we speak and the way we write are not quite the same. When we speak, we often use many clauses (which include groups of words) in a sentence. But when we write — particularly in academic settings — we should use fewer clauses and make the meaning clear with fewer words and clauses than if we were speaking. </p>
<p>To be able to do this, it’s useful to understand specific written language tools. One effective tool in academic writing is called grammatical metaphor.</p>
<p>The kind of metaphor we are more familiar with is <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-functional-grammar/oclc/15488401">lexical metaphor</a>. This is a variation in meaning of a given expression. </p>
<p>For example, the word “life” can be literally understood as the state of being alive. But when we say “food is life”, metaphorically it means food is vital.</p>
<p><a href="https://sflinterestgroup.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/vinh-to_-sflig-2020-presentation.pdf">Grammatical metaphor</a> is different. The term was coined by English-born Australian linguistics professor <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/04/19/vale-emeritus-professor-michael-halliday.html">Michael Halliday</a>. He is the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-functional-grammar/oclc/15488401">father of functional grammar</a> which underpins the <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/english/">Australian Curriculum: English</a>. </p>
<p>Halliday’s <a href="https://www.koorong.com/product/an-introduction-to-functional-grammar-2nd-edition-m_0340574917">concept of grammatical metaphor</a> is when ideas that are expressed in one grammatical form (such as verbs) are expressed in another grammatical form (such as nouns). As such, there is a variation in the expression of a given meaning. </p>
<p>There are many types of grammatical metaphor, but the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957926508095895">most common</a> is done through nominalisation. This is when <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/functional-analysis-of-english-a-hallidayan-approach/oclc/32510022">writers turn</a> what are not normally nouns (such as verbs or adjectives) into nouns.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-teach-youre-sic-kids-about-grammar-so-they-actually-care-144353">4 ways to teach you're (sic) kids about grammar so they actually care</a>
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<p>For example, “clever” in “she is clever” is a description or an adjective. Using nominalisation, “clever” becomes “cleverness” which is a noun. The clause “she is clever” can be turned into “her cleverness” which is a noun group. </p>
<p>“Sings” in “he sings”, which is a doing term or a verb, can be expressed by “his singing”, in which “singing” is a noun. </p>
<p>In these examples, the adjective “clever” and the verb “sings” are both expressed in nouns — “cleverness” and “singing”. </p>
<p>Grammatical metaphor, which is often done through nominalisation like in the examples above, typically features in <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203209936">academic, bureaucratic and scientific writing</a>. Here are four reasons it’s important.</p>
<h2>1. It shortens sentences</h2>
<p>Grammatical metaphor helps shorten explanations and lessen the number of clauses in a sentence. This is because more information can be packed in noun groups rather than spread over many clauses. </p>
<p>Below is a sentence with three clauses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When humans cut down forests (clause one), land becomes exposed (2) and is easily washed away by heavy rain (3). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>With grammatical metaphor or nominalisation, the three clauses become just one.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Deforestation causes soil erosion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“When humans cut down forests” (a clause) becomes a noun group – “deforestation”. The next two clauses (2 and 3) are converted into another noun group – “soil erosion”. </p>
<h2>2. It more obviously shows one thing causing another</h2>
<p>Grammatical metaphor helps show that one thing causes another within one clause, rather than doing it between several clauses. We needed three clauses in the first example to show one action (humans cutting down forests) may have caused another (land being exposed and being washed away by heavy rain).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pencil drawing a bridge between two chasms, with people running over it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370948/original/file-20201124-21-lw9sue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grammatical metaphor shortens sentences and makes room for more information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/drawing-bridge-conquering-adversity-business-concept-347537057">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But with grammatical metaphor, the second version realises the causal relationship between two processes in only one clause. So it becomes more obvious.</p>
<h2>3. It helps connect ideas and structure text</h2>
<p>Below are two sentences.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The government decided to reopen the international route between New Zealand and Hobart. This is a significant strategy to boost Tasmania’s economy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Using grammatical metaphor, the writer can change the verb “decided” to the noun “decision” and the two sentences can become one.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The decision to reopen the international route between New Zealand and Hobart is a significant strategy to boost Tasmania’s economy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This allows the writer to expand the amount and density of information they include. It means they can make further comment about the decision in the same sentence, which helps build a logical and coherent text. And then the next sentence can be used to say something different.</p>
<h2>4. It formalises the tone</h2>
<p>Using grammatical metaphor also creates distance between the writer and reader, making the tone formal and objective. This way, the text establishes a more credible voice. </p>
<p>While there have <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-use-i-more-in-academic-writing-there-is-benefit-to-first-person-perspective-131898">been some calls</a> from academics to make writing more personal, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07268602.2020.1732867">formality, social distance and objectivity</a> are still valued features of academic writing. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-use-i-more-in-academic-writing-there-is-benefit-to-first-person-perspective-131898">We should use 'I' more in academic writing – there is benefit to first-person perspective</a>
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<h2>It’s taught, but not explicitly</h2>
<p>Nominalisation — as a linguistic tool — is <a href="http://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/search?accContentId=ACELA1546">introduced in Year 8</a> in the Australian Curriculum: English. It <a href="https://sflinterestgroup.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/vinh-to_-sflig-2020-presentation.pdf">implicitly appears</a> in various forms of language knowledge from Year 1 to Year 10.</p>
<p>It becomes <a href="https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/learning-writereading-learn/">common across subject areas</a> in the upper primary years. And it is <a href="https://scholars.uow.edu.au/display/publication25174">intimately involved</a> in the increasing use of technical and specialised knowledge of different disciplines in secondary school.</p>
<p>But the term “grammatical metaphor” is not explicitly used in the Australian Curriculum: English and is less known in school settings. As a result, a vast majority of school teachers might not be aware of the relationship between grammatical metaphor and effective academic writing, as well as how grammatical metaphor works in texts. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/writing-needs-to-be-taught-and-practised-australian-schools-are-dropping-the-focus-too-early-148104">Writing needs to be taught and practised. Australian schools are dropping the focus too early</a>
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<p>This calls for more attention to professional learning in this area for teachers and in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs. This will help equip student teachers and practising teachers with pedagogical content knowledge to teach and prepare their students to write effectively in a variety of contexts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vinh To does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Grammatical metaphor is different to what we understand to be “metaphor”. It’s a way of converting words and shortening clauses, so more information can be packed into fewer characters.Vinh To, Lecturer in English Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1318982020-03-04T19:08:32Z2020-03-04T19:08:32ZWe should use ‘I’ more in academic writing – there is benefit to first-person perspective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318493/original/file-20200304-66064-1wuzbkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The use of the word “I” in academic writing, that is writing in the <a href="https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-writing-in-first-person.html">first person</a>, has a troublesome history. Some say it makes writing too subjective, others that it’s essential for accuracy.</p>
<p>This is reflected in how students, particularly in secondary schools, are trained to write. Teachers I work with are often surprised that I advocate, at times, invoking the first person in essays or other assessment in their subject areas. </p>
<p>In academic writing the role of the author is to explain their argument dispassionately and objectively. The author’s personal opinion in such endeavours is neither here nor there. </p>
<p>As noted in Strunk and White’s highly influential <a href="http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf">Elements of Style</a> – (first published in 1959) the writer is encouraged to place themselves in the background.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Write in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This all seems very reasonable and scholarly. The move towards including the first person perspective, however, is becoming more <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1607509">acceptable</a> in academia.</p>
<p>There are times when invoking the first person is more meaningful and even rigorous than not. I will give three categories in which first person academic writing is more effective than using the third person.</p>
<h2>1. Where an academic is offering their personal view or argument</h2>
<p>Above, I could have said “there are three categories” rather than “I will give three categories”. The former makes a claim of discovering some objective fact. The latter, a more intellectually honest and accountable approach, is me offering my interpretation.</p>
<p>I could also say “three categories are apparent”, but that is ignoring the fact it is apparent to <em>me</em>. It would be an attempt to grant too much objectivity to a position than it deserves. </p>
<p>In a similar vein, statements such as “it can be argued” or “it was decided”, using the passive voice, avoid responsibility. It is much better to say “I will argue that” or “we decided that” and then go on to prosecute the argument or justify the decision. </p>
<p>Taking responsibility for our stances and reasoning is important culturally as well as academically. In a participatory democracy, we are expected to be accountable for our ideas and choices. It is also a stand against the kinds of anonymous assertions that easily proliferate via fake and unnamed social media accounts. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">Post-truth politics and why the antidote isn't simply 'fact-checking' and truth</a>
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<p>It’s worth noting that <a href="https://www.nature.com/">Nature</a> – arguably one of the world’s best science journals – prefers authors to selectively avoid the passive voice. Its <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature-research/for-authors/write">writing guidelines</a> note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nature journals prefer authors to write in the active voice (“we performed the experiment…”) as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly.</p>
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<h2>2. Where the author’s perspective is part of the analysis</h2>
<p>Some disciplines, such as <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/sites/default/files/docs/learningguide-firstpersonwritinganthropology.pdf">anthropology</a>, recognise that who is doing the research and why they are doing it ought to be overtly present in their presentation of it. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There’s more to Descartes’ famous phrase than a claim to existence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cogito-ergo-sum-latin-philosophical-proposition-481385488">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Removing the author’s presence can allow important cultural or other perspectives held by the author to remain unexamined. This can lead to the so-called <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297525123_The_crisis_in_representation_Reflections_and_assessments">crisis of representation</a>, in which the interpretation of texts and other cultural artefacts is removed from any interpretive stance of the author. </p>
<p>This gives a false impression of objectivity. As the philosopher Thomas Nagel notes, there is no “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/View-Nowhere-Thomas-Nagel/dp/0195056442">view from nowhere</a>”. </p>
<p>Philosophy commonly invokes the first person position, too. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/">Rene Descartes</a> famously inferred “I think therefore I am” (<em>cogito ergo sum</em>). But his use of the first person in <a href="http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/">Meditations on First Philosophy</a> was not simply an account of his own introspection. It was also an invitation to the reader to think for themselves.</p>
<h2>3. Where the author wants to show their reasoning</h2>
<p>The third case is especially interesting in education. </p>
<p>I tell students of science, critical thinking and <a href="https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf">philosophy</a> that a phrase guaranteed to raise my hackles is “I strongly believe …”. In terms of being rationally persuasive, this is not relevant unless they then go on tell me <em>why</em> they believe it. I want to know what and how they are thinking.</p>
<p>To make their thinking most clearly an object of my study, I need them to make themselves the subjects of their writing. </p>
<p>I prefer students to write something like “I am not convinced by Dawson’s argument because…” rather than “Dawson’s argument is opposed by DeVries, who says …”. I want to understand <em>their</em> thinking not just use the argument of DeVries. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thinking-about-thinking-helps-kids-learn-how-can-we-teach-critical-thinking-129795">Thinking about thinking helps kids learn. How can we teach critical thinking?</a>
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<p>Of course I would hope they do engage with DeVries, but then I’d want them to say which argument they find more convincing and what their <em>own</em> reasons were for being convinced.</p>
<p>Just stating Devries’ objection is good analysis, but we also need students to evaluate and justify, and it is here that the first person position is most useful. </p>
<p>It is not always accurate to say a piece is written in the first or third person. There are reasons to invoke the first person position at times and reasons not to. An essay in which it is used once should not mean we think of the whole essay as from the first person perspective. </p>
<p>We need to be more nuanced about how we approach this issue and appreciate when authors should “place themselves in the background” and when their voice matters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ellerton is affiliated with the Centre for Critical and Creative Thinking. He is a Fellow of the Rationalist Society of Australia.</span></em></p>An academic should be able to use “I” in an essay which offers their point of view. In this way, they take responsibility for their argument.Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1258522020-01-03T09:41:38Z2020-01-03T09:41:38ZAcademic writing can be boring – but there are good reasons for that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299689/original/file-20191031-187942-f6ece.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C243%2C4943%2C3488&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You should read some Franz Mesmer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-young-asian-muslim-woman-look-1536041522?src=4zuBjCpj294-CKvdThWRpQ-1-50">airdone/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’ve ever made friends with an unwieldy textbook or spent the night trawling through online libraries for journal papers to support a soon-to-be due essay, you’ve probably lamented the boring and unemotional nature of academic writing at least once. But this is not an unhappy accident. There’s a good reason for it that goes back centuries – and it also explains why you’re not hugging trees to cure your illnesses.</p>
<p>The necessity of rigorous if uninspiring academic writing is perhaps best illustrated with the story of a prominent 18th-century intellectual named <a href="https://www.famousscientists.org/franz-mesmer/">Franz Anton Mesmer</a>. He believed that illnesses were caused by blockages that interfered with the healthy flow of magnetic fluid through the body. In the late 1700s, he developed the idea of animal magnetism – also known as mesmerism – as a way of removing these blockages and restoring health. Mesmer would <a href="http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/06/the-magnetic-therapy-water-wand-a-debunking-from-history.html">“magnetise” water or iron rods</a> by passing his hands over them, and use them to heal afflicted body parts.</p>
<p>Mesmer had a strong social conscience and believed deeply in what he was doing – so much so that he “magnetised” trees in a park near his upmarket consulting rooms so that the poor could treat themselves by literally hugging these trees.</p>
<p>Reflecting this passion and his general talent for showmanship, his demonstrations and writing were colourful and exciting. For example, <a href="https://www.nothuman.net/images/files/discussion/1/be1b3f60fa6e06eddd0a538dfd6d0456.pdf">in his book Mesmerism</a>, he wrote after curing someone of blindness that “crowds flocked to my house to make sure for themselves, and each one, after putting the patient to some kind of test, withdrew greatly astonished, with the most flattering remarks to myself”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299695/original/file-20191031-187912-19askui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mesmer’s magnetic magic was in fact the simple power of suggestion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_mesmer.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Thanks in part also to the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/007327539503300201">fashionable allure of electricity and magnetism at the time</a>, Mesmer’s work took off. For six years, his treatments were extremely popular in aristocratic society and made him very rich.</p>
<p>Of course, some were sceptical. The one who spoiled Mesmer’s game was French King Louis XVI. In 1784, Louis set up a commission of leading scientists to investigate Mesmer’s methods. They systematically tested and dismantled his claims.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Bully_for_Brontosaurus.html?id=f_VEAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">most memorable example</a> was a patient who went into convulsions whenever she drank “magnetised” water. The commission members gave her the water, observed the dramatic convulsions, and offered her a drink of normal water afterwards to help her recover. The only problem for Mesmer was that they had switched the drinks.</p>
<p>It was painfully clear that Mesmer’s results were due to the power of suggestion – his patients were being mesmerised, and nothing more. If he had been more rigorous and less colourful, he might have been much more widely recognised as a <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2019/03-04/franz-mesmer-hypnotism-mesmerized/">founding father of clinical hypnosis</a>. Instead, he left France <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299336/">disgraced</a>, in search of clients elsewhere.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the commission’s ingenious methods <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1078143905000220">provided a model for controlled clinical trials</a> to rigorously assess medical treatments, in what is now considered perhaps <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1078143905000220">“the first modern psychology study”</a>.</p>
<p>The Mesmer case was a particularly impactful and high-profile example of why academics now eschew colourful language and grand claims in their written research. Academic writing is deliberately dry and impersonal to help researchers assess where the truth actually is, as opposed to where they would like it to be.</p>
<p>That’s why one of the greatest discoveries in the last century was written up in some of the most dry, technical language imaginable. Francis Crick and James Watson’s seminal paper <a href="https://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/coldspring/printit.html">unlocking DNA’s structural secrets</a> ends with the classic understatement: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”</p>
<p>Of course, the full story is more complex than just one single spectacular scandal changing the course of science. By Mesmer’s time, calls for dry, clear language in science had been gathering pace for a century, pioneered by writers such as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/">Francis Bacon</a>. Along with a growing contingent of scholars endorsing a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/">more rigorous approach to scientific investigation</a>, he was highly critical of the then widespread use of elaborate and manipulative language. Many alchemists, for example, hid their findings behind cryptic stories so that they would be incomprehensible to what they considered the <a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/vow/vow09.htm">unworthy public</a>.</p>
<h2>Deliberately dull</h2>
<p>There are other reasons for academic writing being dull. Limited word counts leave little room for flair. Academics also need to use precise technical terms to avoid confusion – which are inevitably a burden to learn for the first time.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, these good reasons for dry writing are seldom explained to university students or the general public. One of the strongest cohorts of students I ever encountered was initially dreadful at academic writing. <a href="https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJIOME.2008.019648">I decided to investigate why</a> – and it turned out that they were deliberately leaving out facts, references, and technical terms on the grounds that this would make their writing less interesting. After we explained why these things were important, they went on to produce outstanding academic work.</p>
<p>In fact, even the training early career researchers receive in how to write for journals <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_DDwCqx6wpcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+unwritten+rules+of+phd+research&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiuit3dycnlAhUYHcAKHZ83B_wQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=the%20unwritten%20rules%20of%20phd%20research&f=false">seldom covers the why</a>. Nor do they tend to receive much training in how to change their writing style when writing for the public. As a result, doing so requires them to override years of habit – so it’s not surprising that they usually do it badly. Training students and researchers in the theory behind different writing styles would help them better appreciate academic writing, and know when not to use it.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-exciting-trumps-honest-traditional-academic-journals-encourage-bad-science-29804">When ‘exciting’ trumps ‘honest’, traditional academic journals encourage bad science</a>
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<p>Beneath this though, there’s a deeper issue. Currently, a researcher’s success depends almost exclusively on <a href="https://socialsciences.nature.com/users/266369-manish-khare/posts/54231-publish-or-perish-in-academia-a-classic-case-of-antisynergy">writing academic papers</a>. Research funding is linked to indicators such as the <a href="https://www.ref.ac.uk/">Research Excellence Framework</a>, which focuses on journal article output. That could be changed. More funding for public outreach via accessible writing, along with routes to promotion on the same basis, would encourage researchers to translate the “academese” they usually write in into knowledge for all.</p>
<p>When you know the background, the unemotional boringness of academic writing makes sense. The challenge is making the good reasons for it broadly understood – and finding ways to make the valuable knowledge academics produce accessible to all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon Rugg received funding from the Government Office of the East Midlands for some of the work reported in the article "Selection and use of elicitation techniques for education research".</span></em></p>Academic language wasn’t always rigorous – and it led to people hugging trees to cure their illnesses.Gordon Rugg, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164692019-05-09T14:32:37Z2019-05-09T14:32:37ZSouth African research output has risen, but caution must temper celebration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273542/original/file-20190509-183103-1r6arn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Publish or perish?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each year, <a href="https://www.natureindex.com/">Nature</a>, a research output database, publishes its index of high-quality research outputs across a range of journals within the natural sciences. Topics range from climate change to human biology. The data on the index represent output by institution, by country and by extent of collaboration. </p>
<p>In 2018, only one African country featured in the top 50: South Africa, <a href="https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2018/country/all">coming in at 38</a>. It was at 39 on the 2017 list. The improvement is a result of fractional count, which is used to allow for multiple authors from various institutions and countries collaborating on a single publication. Simply put, this means that more South African authors published research in the 2017 to 2018 period, and they did so in collaboration with researchers from other countries.</p>
<p>The Nature Index is far from exhaustive. It doesn’t capture research outputs in, for instance, humanities or social sciences. </p>
<p>Another recently released <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/114">publication</a> by the Academy of Science of South Africa suggests that increased research production should be celebrated – with caution. </p>
<p>The Academy of Science of South Africa’s report includes much detail about where and how the country’s research community has increased its number of publications, citations and collaborations. But it also raises concerns that sometimes, quantity comes at the cost of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-approach-the-revolution-in-scholarly-publishing-116091">quality</a>. In some cases increased publication counts have not served the desired end: to spread knowledge at the frontiers of a field.</p>
<h2>Quality costs</h2>
<p>Universities around the world are increasingly positioned as competitive businesses. This often results in academics being judged on the basis of various factors that are used to measure productivity and efficiency.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/competition-as-a-fetish-why-universities-need-to-escape-the-trap-58084">Competition as a fetish: why universities need to escape the trap</a>
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<p>Publication counts may well be the most commonly used such metric. For example, publication metrics dominate in <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-universities-shouldnt-be-playing-the-global-rankings-game-105221">the formula</a> that’s used to develop university ranking systems. </p>
<p>But all factors are partial in their representation of what’s being measured – they cannot tell the full story of what’s being produced and what value it adds to a field of study.</p>
<p>The contributions that universities make to our understanding of the world is mainly built bit by bit, over time, as teams of researchers contribute some small new understanding. Disseminating these small contributions to all those working in the field is crucial to such incremental knowledge development. And academic publications are the key way to disseminate knowledge.</p>
<p>But publication is not the goal – it’s just the means. The goal is knowledge dissemination. This distinction is crucial but sadly poorly grasped. It is the blind drive for publications at all costs that leads to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-developing-countries-are-particularly-vulnerable-to-predatory-journals-86704">predatory publications</a>. </p>
<p>As the Academy of Science of South Africa report reveals, South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training has battled to monitor the rise of the predatory publication. The country has seen a steep increase in <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/114">dodgy articles</a>. In South Africa, publications are awarded funding in the institutional block grant. While the department currently uses six <a href="http://assafjournalblog.org.za/dhet-lists/">international and national lists of journals</a> to vet which articles should be subsidised, a number of publications of dubious merit slip through the system. </p>
<p>The Academy of Science of South Africa <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/114">suggests</a> that between R100 million and R300 million has been paid to universities by the state for predatory publications that by their very nature fail to meet the central goal of knowledge dissemination. This amount is in the form of subsidies that the Department of Higher Education and Training pays to universities for research publications.</p>
<p>In times of financial constraint, it’s not surprising that South African universities are pressuring their academic staff to publish and subsequently to increase institutional subsidies. But sadly some of the methods used by universities to drive productivity, such as incentives paid to individual researchers for their publications, have led to <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11911/114/2019_assaf_twelve_years_later_report_appendix1.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y">insidious examples</a> of misconduct by both authors and some local journals. </p>
<p>In some cases, <a href="https://theconversation.com/incentives-for-academics-can-have-unintended-negative-consequences-78408">institutional practices</a> seem to actively contribute to problematic practices evidenced in the very uneven distribution of predatory publications across the sector.</p>
<h2>In conclusion</h2>
<p>It is not all doom and gloom. Both the Academy of Science of South Africa report and the Nature Index demonstrate the great successes South Africa has had in building its research productivity. This should be celebrated. But we need to keep a careful eye on the flaws in the system that drive output for personal gain over research dissemination for knowledge building. </p>
<p>Universities need to look carefully at the message they’re giving through their incentive and promotion systems. In many cases the message is that publication is the goal to which academics are meant to aspire, and the prize is individual recognition and reward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioux McKenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa is ahead of the pack when it comes to research output in Africa. But this ranking is not a celebration.Sioux McKenna, Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1050612018-10-24T14:33:27Z2018-10-24T14:33:27ZHow to read and learn from scientific literature, even if you’re not an expert<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241808/original/file-20181023-169801-c0kgls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's hard work, but reading scientific literature can be very valuable.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brendan Howard/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reading scientific literature is not for the faint-hearted. It’s dense, and very often full of foreign terms and ideas. </p>
<p>It also assumes a basic understanding of the discipline in question. I can’t imagine that many people outside the world of theoretical physics are reading journal articles on the subject. That makes sense: <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/it-s-not-just-you-science-papers-are-getting-harder-to-read-1.21751">research has found</a> that scientific literature across disciplines is getting <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/28/119370">more complicated</a>.</p>
<p>But as more and more journals embrace the principles of <a href="https://doaj.org/">open access</a>, and more information becomes freely available online, curious readers are probably more likely to start engaging with scientific literature. That’s a good thing. Research shouldn’t be regarded as a closely kept secret for a small number of people. In a world full of half truths, simplistic and misleading summaries, and outright “fake news”, being able to read and engage with scientific literature can be a powerful weapon.</p>
<p>Of course, you can also seek out examples of scientists writing for the public. But be wary: not all scientists are willing to do this; we are, on the whole, very picky about details and don’t like generalisations. So try to engage with scientific literature where you can: it will be hard work in the beginning if you have no scientific background, but it’s a skill that can be developed.</p>
<p>So, if you’d like to start reading more scientific literature, here are a few tips to improve your experience. I’m focusing largely on the life sciences since that’s my area of expertise.</p>
<h2>Making sense of articles</h2>
<p>Science is about asking and answering questions. Scientific articles are the way in which scientists communicate their results to their peers. Here’s how to navigate those articles.</p>
<p><strong>Choose journals that publish good science:</strong></p>
<p>“Good science” is rigorous, verifiable and rooted in a broader body of research. There are however, an increasing number of scientific journals available. Some have better credentials than others; often, these are linked to reputable scientific societies. For instance, the South African Journal of Botany is the journal of the South African Association of Botanists. </p>
<p>Only people with a four-year degree who are active in the field can be members of the society. The same sort of rigour is applied to who can publish in the journal.</p>
<p>When journals aren’t linked to societies, you can look at their editors’ credentials. Reputable scientists are unlikely to allow their names to be linked to fraudulent or predatory (those that charge a fee to publish articles, without any review or editing) journals. </p>
<p>These are not reputable, and do not publish robust, good science. </p>
<p>Also, don’t be fooled by people’s titles. I would hope that no one would consult me about heart surgery but I sometimes see adverts where a “doctor” has endorsed a product – often one that has nothing to do with their field of expertise.</p>
<p><strong>Start with the abstract for a broad overview:</strong></p>
<p>It’s expensive to subscribe to most journals or to buy entire articles online. But even limited access journals usually supply the abstract for free. This summarises the article and usually gives the major findings. You can then decide whether you want more details and are prepared to buy the article, if it’s not open access, or to keep reading if it is.</p>
<p><strong>And then continue in a chronological fashion:</strong></p>
<p>Most articles have an introduction which introduces the topic and sets the scene. It usually includes a statement as to the aim of the study – essentially, the question that the authors set out to answer. It also provides references to previous literature, which could be useful to understanding the topic. There will references throughout the article; this is a way of ensuring that all statements are substantiated with reference to the published literature.</p>
<p>The next section of an article is usually followed by the materials and methods (although in some journals this might be relegated to the end of the article). Here, the authors will provide details about the methodology used in their experiments. This is where things can get very technical, but you will also see constant reference to other research that has been published using the same or similar methods if you want to get a better understanding of the methods. </p>
<p>Then comes the results section, which outlines the results yielded by the experiments. This, too, is likely to be very technical but is also where the details are provided. </p>
<p>The last section is the discussion, which provides the authors’ interpretation of the results. This is often what scientists read most carefully, since it’s where the authors “connect the dots”; they are also likely to provide a conclusion and suggest an answer to the question they were trying to answer. </p>
<h2>Read widely</h2>
<p>Once you’re finished reading one article on a topic, read some more. You should not ever just believe what is stated in a single article. Science is very repetitive and builds on the research that has come before, so researchers are often repeating others’ experiments. This is where the in text references come in handy. They provide a way for results from one laboratory to be checked and tested by others. So, to get the truth about a topic, read a number of articles about it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenda Wingfield receives funding from NRF and DST. She works for the University of Pretoria and her research is done in FABI. She is vice president of ASSAf and holds a research chair in Fungal Genomics. </span></em></p>Scientific articles are the way in which scientists communicate their results to their peers.Brenda Wingfield, Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DST-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor of Genetics, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/965532018-05-28T13:47:31Z2018-05-28T13:47:31ZUniversity writing groups provide an unexpected space for change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219380/original/file-20180517-155558-9x8fcj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ZephyrMedia/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0260293930180102">a seminal paper</a> on what constitutes quality in education, scholars Lee Harvey and Diana Green argue that a “quality education” is one in which a student experiences a “personal transformation” as a result of enhancing and empowering mechanisms. </p>
<p>They claim that students are “enhanced” when they are positioned at the centre of the learning and assessment process, and are “empowered” through being involved in the decision-making around their own transformation. </p>
<p>Such transformation conversations, especially in African contexts, almost always include contested debates on <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC132752">curriculum</a>. Notably, scholars have highlighted how the problem is not only what universities teach – that is, the curriculum – but also the way they teach it. This refers to ways of teaching that can sufficiently engage with and problematise “normal” practices in higher education spaces.</p>
<p>So the question becomes: what can universities do to enhance both personal and curriculum transformation?</p>
<p>We set about answering this question in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2018.1450361">a study</a> about university writing groups. These groups are inspiring and empowering spaces run by and for students. Here, students use feedback from peers to develop their writing practices. It’s a collaborative and collegial environment.</p>
<p>Writing groups might also have unexpected benefits for transformation, as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2018.1450361">our research</a> has shown. In South Africa, calls for the decolonisation of university practices and curriculum have dominated transformation conversations. Writing groups provide a space where students can learn and engage with these complex issues. </p>
<p>Our study focused on a writing group programme at a research-intensive university in South Africa. Data from the initial pilot programme as well as the 13 current groups were collected through anonymous reviews and interviews with participants. The groups are multidisciplinary in composition although we made a general divide between the Natural Sciences and Humanities. Each group consists of between six and eight students with meetings co-ordinated by a PhD student or post-doctoral fellow.</p>
<p>Our findings show that writing groups can play a key role in transforming students by providing a space where their own “voice” can be developed in their writing. Developing a sense of voice is a difficult part of academic writing and takes a lot of practice. The regular, constructive and encouraging feedback from peers and the long-term, ongoing interaction provides a consistent and supportive network that students value. This suggests steps towards transformation in both the way we teach academic writing and the individual student’s writing practices. </p>
<p>We found that the collegial “safe space” offered by writing groups allows for students’ emotional well-being to be actively supported by a committed community of scholars. Being untied from evaluation, students can engage freely without risk of judgement. Writing groups are also seen to provide a space for students to experiment with, and explore their changing identities.</p>
<h2>Altering practice</h2>
<p>The teaching structure of writing groups is also important; these are not “top-down” spaces. Rather, they are organised, maintained and led by the students themselves; creating an egalitarian setting where students can develop their practices in a flexible, supportive environment.</p>
<p>But perhaps of most interest was the ways in which the writing groups also played a key role in transforming practice. </p>
<p>Multidisciplinary groups are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360902725025">particularly useful</a> for making disciplinary practices explicit to students because they highlight how academics in different subjects write in different ways.</p>
<p>Challenging and negotiating the choices made in their writing exposes students to how writing reflects disciplinary norms and values – that is, particular ways of being and doing in academia. This enables students to start recognising that there is not only one way of “doing”. It incites them to start challenging the norm. </p>
<p>For example, Natural Science writing tends to be more objective and detached. Humanities tends to be more subjective, with claims being justified according to the theoretical perspective being used. The differences in the kinds of knowledge being made in different fields plays out in myriad differences in style and tone. </p>
<p>Writing groups also provide a space where many of the “rules of the game” of academia became revealed to students. They provide invaluable opportunities for these different rules and conventions to be debated, unpacked and challenged by students in ways that standard learning platforms or teaching spaces cannot achieve to the same degree.</p>
<h2>Questioning and challenging</h2>
<p>Our research suggests that writing groups provide an ideal space where personal transformation can occur. They not only provide support for student writing through feedback activities, they also put the onus of writing support back into the hands of the students themselves. This enhances students by putting them at the centre of decision-making around their learning and empowering them to take a proactive approach in their development and transformation into academic scholars.</p>
<p>While writing groups are not a panacea for the complex academic literacy challenges students face in transforming university contexts, they can and do play a valuable role in providing a transformative space for postgraduate students to learn, question and challenge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Writing groups provide a space where the “rules of the game” of academia become clear.Kirstin Wilmot, PhD Candidate, University of SydneySioux McKenna, Director of PG Studies & Higher Education Studies PhD Co-ordinator, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/590102016-05-11T14:11:44Z2016-05-11T14:11:44ZAcademics need to embrace new ways of writing and sharing research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121929/original/image-20160510-20749-1i5kgf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The old ways aren't necessarily the best when it comes to academic writing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Universities are a “thousand-year-old industry on the cusp of profound change”. That’s according to <a href="http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/University_of_the_future/$FILE/University_of_the_future_2012.pdf">a study</a> that explored Australia’s higher education landscape four years ago. One warning from the report rings true far beyond Australia and all the way around the world:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Over the next ten-15 years, the current public university model … will prove unviable in all but a few cases.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://stan.md/1N83AhO">Warning shots</a> are ringing out across the world. But how many academics are actually paying attention? In my experience as a lecturer at a South African university, we continue to placate the two denizens of academia – teaching and research – in the same way we always have. Teaching remains focused on <a href="https://theconversation.com/schools-must-get-the-basics-right-before-splashing-out-on-technology-52994">instruction</a> and content reproduction, while most research never makes it beyond journals.</p>
<p>If we continue to teach in outdated ways, we will increasingly lose touch with our students. Equally, if we continue to closet our findings in traditional journals, we may find our hard work increasingly eclipsed by research organisations that use new media to effectively share their findings.</p>
<p>Lots of attention is being given to <a href="https://theconversation.com/outdated-teaching-methods-will-blunt-technologys-power-40503">new ways</a> of teaching. The great news is that there are also exciting new publishing opportunities springing up. </p>
<h2>The right to write</h2>
<p>On May 12 2015 I published my <a href="https://theconversation.com/outdated-teaching-methods-will-blunt-technologys-power-40503">first article</a> with The Conversation Africa. One year and ten articles later, I’ve started to view my “right to write” in a totally different way. For more than 20 years as an academic, writing has been more of a duty than a need – let alone a right. Productivity units must be met. Papers must be written and published in approved journals. Even the joy of writing for conferences, which can generate spirited discussion, has been removed. Conference presentations don’t contribute much to one’s chance of promotion.</p>
<p>Of course there is great merit in writing for journals. These have been one of the primary stores of human knowledge, and their peer review process foregrounds credible research – <a href="https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/03/08/the-increasing-use-of-predatory-journals-for-advocacy-research/">most of the time</a>. They teach academics how to write carefully argued pieces, and the best ones hold us to high standards of quality. </p>
<p>Pragmatically, they also pay. Individual academics and their institutions earn money for each article that’s published in certain accredited journals.</p>
<p>However, the money associated with such journals has created an entire industry that flies counter to a world where sharing knowledge is seen as the right thing to do. Journals are being <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/04/02/academic-publishing-piracy/">accused</a> of using the free services of academics to write and the free services of reviewers to edit. They then charge exorbitant prices so that the very same academics can’t even access their own content. </p>
<p>But traditional journals are no longer the be-all and end-all. At least, they shouldn’t be. Open-access journals, blogs, wikis, professional Facebook pages and YouTube channels offer academics a range of exciting, different ways to share their research. These spaces come with a range of benefits.</p>
<h2>New media means new benefits</h2>
<p>The first of these is the far quicker turnaround time. One of academics’ abiding frustrations with the current publishing process is how long it takes for articles to see the light of day. <a href="http://openaccesspublishing.org/oa11/article.pdf">Research</a> shows that it takes, on average, between nine and 18 months (and sometimes longer) from submission to publication. Writing for new media spaces means that research can be shared within hours or days, opening up the opportunity for discussion, debate and dissent far more quickly.</p>
<p>Your reach is far greater in new media spaces. Some studies estimate that the average journal article is read entirely by <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you">only ten people</a>. Tools like <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/#?modal_active=none">Google Analytics</a> can help academics to track their readership in new media spaces. Some sites, like The Conversation, have their own metrics systems – from this, I know that each of my articles is read on average 4,000 times.</p>
<p>Greater reach leads to far greater exposure. This can take the form of comments from academics around the world, invitations to collaborate, and TV and radio interviews. This takes academic research far beyond conferences and journals. I’ve discussed my work on different platforms, including international newspapers, and have been drawn into several local and international research collaborations. Isn’t that sort of work the point of publishing? </p>
<p>New media spaces can also be less intimidating for young, inexperienced academics than established journals are. Getting used to writing, finding your own voice and presenting your work on a public platform is all good practice for journal writing. Universities often offer <a href="http://utlo.ukzn.ac.za/Files/Come%20Write%20With%20Me%20Sept2014.pdf">programmes</a> designed to help young academics develop and strengthen their writing, and these are useful tools as well.</p>
<p>Finally, new media spaces offer a valuable opportunity for feedback, conversation and even correction. They’re not about getting it <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-the-world-embraced-wikipedia-41461">perfect upfront </a> – they’re about learning, arguing and altering. This encourages the kind of dialogue and idea sharing that any academic should value.</p>
<h2>Stepping out of our academic closet</h2>
<p>Change isn’t coming to academia – it’s here. And the one thing you don’t do in the path of <a href="http://stan.md/1N83AhO">an avalanche</a> is stand still. The privilege of just talking about new teaching approaches and new publishing opportunities has passed. If academics don’t make bold moves to change how we use new platforms and technologies, we ourselves are at risk of becoming irrelevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Blewett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many exciting new publishing opportunities opening up for academics who want to take their work beyond traditional spaces like journals.Craig Blewett, Senior Lecturer in Education & Technology, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/558992016-03-10T10:37:13Z2016-03-10T10:37:13ZAfrican academics face a huge divide between their real and scholarly selves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114102/original/image-20160307-31275-xyw31d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Too much of what we know about Africa is still coming from outside the continent.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is a foundation essay. These are longer than usual and take a wider look at a key issue affecting society</em></p>
<p>African scholarship on Africa is operating at only a fraction of its true potential. It is hampered by the preferences, policies and politics of the Western academy. There are three reasons for my assertion.</p>
<p>The first relates to the poor state of knowledge about African economics and politics. Western academics tend not to focus on generating accurate information, instead using datasets to infer causal associations on a highly abstract level. But these datasets are actually far too weak for any such conclusions to be drawn.</p>
<p>Secondly, the structure of academic rewards and careers systematically disadvantages those who do not have the skills or capacities for this kind of high-end quantitative endeavour or have serious misgivings about it. This causes severe dissonance between actual lived experience and the academic work that is validated by universities.</p>
<p>Finally, there’s what I call “Occidentalism” in theory and policy. This ascribes a cogency to the West’s intellectual and cultural products that doesn’t exist. Quite simply, the Western experience of state formation remains the standard against which the rest of the world is indexed.</p>
<h2>1. A dearth of data</h2>
<p>Too much social scientific “fact” about Africa is actually fiction because it is not based on <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100939320">real data</a>.</p>
<p>In his recent book, <a href="http://africanarguments.org/africa-why-economists-get-it-wrong/">Africa: Why Economists Get it Wrong</a>, Morten Jerven argues that the economic data used for studying African econometrics are highly unreliable. Econometricians have tried to compensate for this deficiency by using sophisticated statistical techniques. For instance, economists have spent much time and effort trying to explain the supposed African chronic growth deficit. They take governance data from the late 1990s or early 2000s and use it to try to explain why Africa grew more slowly than the global average over the past 50 years. </p>
<p>But, as Jerven points out, cause should come first and effect later. A lack of data and of awareness about the data’s deficits led econometricians to make a simple error. They are trying to explain something that didn’t actually happen. <em>Africa’s chronic growth deficit didn’t happen.</em></p>
<p>Instead – as everyone who lived on the continent at the time knows – African economies grew in the 1960s and early 1970s, stalled in the 1980s and early 1990s, then grew again, albeit in a different fashion. This isn’t a story of chronic slow growth but of boom, bust and boom again. There was a time-specific economic crisis that was deeper and more protracted in Africa than elsewhere in the world. <em>That</em> is what needs to be explained. African economies’ dominant feature is their extremely high sensitivity to global economic conditions.</p>
<p>That conclusion would lead to radically different economic policy prescriptions at the World Bank and other international financial institutions and donors.</p>
<h2>2. What knowledge is valued</h2>
<p>The structure of academic careers needs serious attention and reform. Consider the biases in academic reward and promotion. Teaching is undervalued. Peer-reviewed publication is rewarded, particularly if it appears in high-ranking journals that prefer certain methodologies and questions. Those methods are typically quantitative. They build beautiful castles in the air or palaces on foundations of sand.</p>
<p>This career structure marginalises African scholars. Supervisors in foreign universities rarely have the subject matter expertise, so they tend to guide students towards more theoretical approaches. Examiners and peer reviewers likewise reward and reinforce their own disciplinary biases. On the other hand, it is common to see junior Western scholars doing rather uninteresting quantitative studies or superficial case studies. Despite their shortcomings these studies are published. These scholars, then, become the group that undertakes peer review.</p>
<p>The African scholar of political science may be compelled to adopt a schizoid personality. To become an academic in a Western university she or he may be obliged to unlearn important knowledge, and learn frameworks and skills that are actually irrelevant to the situation at hand but are necessary for being considered a professional academic.</p>
<h2>3. Occidentalism</h2>
<p>Western scholars have long <a href="http://www.arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism">exoticised</a> eastern and, by extension, African societies. “Occidentalism” is the inverse of this.</p>
<p>One prime example of Occidentalism is the concept of “the state”. Historians and anthropologists have tried to problematise this concept, but it carries with it a strong teleology: a one-way process of state formation and state-building. It is a process of turning robber barons to landowner barons to constitutional government, moving from a traditional patronage-based political order toward theorist Max Weber’s <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137364890">definition of a state</a>. This is essentially an imitation of a north-west European state, or France or the US. These are all countries that established their modern statehood at the zenith of imperialism.</p>
<p>The rise of Asia will definitely challenge this. There will be a diversity of destinations for the consolidation of governance, sharing only the common factor of international recognition. This diversity reflects the fact that most countries’ vernacular doesn’t contain a word for “state” but rather for power, authority, government, the regime of the day and so on.</p>
<p>It is the same in Africa: political vernaculars have words for many things, but if we are to talk about “states” it must be in English or French, in the domain of scholarship or the practice of international law and international relations.</p>
<p>Occidentalism also occurs in policy engagement. Analysis is shaped to suit the audience, and scholars end up speaking their language. Rather than evidence-based policy, there is policy-based evidence-making. The paradigm of this is engaging with western governments, the World Bank or the United Nations. Much of the policy-related discourse on good governance, post-conflict reconstruction and development takes place in a fantasy land that exists only in the minds of international civil servants.</p>
<h2>Towards an African scholarship</h2>
<p>Everything I have said does not lessen the need for rigor. To the contrary, it is more difficult to produce first-rate scholarship by being true to the realities of this continent than it is to slot into the established track.</p>
<p>Generating accurate data about African economies, conflicts and political systems is hard. It is harder than pretending that the datasets which actually exist are good enough. It requires doing fieldwork, gathering information in a thorough and painstaking way.</p>
<p>Writing and publishing good quality, fact-heavy accounts of African realities is also not easy. Detailed accounts of what is actually happening don’t fit neatly into 5,000- to 8,000-word journal articles. The market for books is very small, so that there is not much chance of publishing the kinds of local histories or detailed political memoirs that are commonplace in Europe.</p>
<p>Constructing frameworks for explaining how societies actually function is intellectually demanding. It involves challenging the dominant frameworks and replacing them with better ones.</p>
<p>I am confident that these things will happen and, as they do, that scholars in Africa will feel less divided between their real and their scholarly selves.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on a keynote address that the author delivered to the 2015-2016 cohort of Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa fellows during the fellowship workshop held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in partnership with the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex de Waal is affiliated with the World Peace Foundation.</span></em></p>African academics should be leading the pack when it comes to producing research and information about the continent. So what’s holding them back?Alex De Waal, Research Professor and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514342016-01-12T11:27:50Z2016-01-12T11:27:50ZHow universities can help students avoid plagiarism: get them to write better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107757/original/image-20160111-6988-1pzw7ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Make students think, not copy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">jurgenfr/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As universities get better at detecting plagiarism, students are having to find new ways to avoid getting caught. </p>
<p>I have recently had quite a few students asking to see their reports from <a href="http://turnitin.com/">Turnitin</a> – a plagiarism detection software used in most universities to root out internet plagiarism. University departments are increasingly making Turnitin’s “originality reports” – which highlight any verbatim copying on the student’s electronic essay script, calculating the exact percentage of unoriginal writing – available to students to help them avoid plagiarism. </p>
<p>The latest student to ask me for their report was somewhat taken aback when I replied: “Oh, so you’ve plagiarised then?” I didn’t mean to be facetious. But it got me thinking that the way plagiarism is defined and communicated to students by universities isn’t really working. </p>
<p>Most of us in higher education have seen increasing support provided to students on strategies to avoid plagiarism: from writing tutorials and handbooks warning of its dire consequences, to policies that make originality reports available to them. </p>
<p>Yet in a manner redolent of the circularity on which the dieting industry thrives – it only works because it doesn’t – and despite this increasing support, plagiarism still seems to be <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/feb/06/do-students-understand-plagiarism">on the rise</a>. In a recent freedom of information request, The Times <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4654719.ece">found</a> that nearly 50,000 university students had cheated in the last three years, including plagiarism and using essay-writing services. </p>
<h2>De-plagiarism is no better</h2>
<p>Of course, this may be because we’re just better at detecting it. <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/internets-role-rise-student-plagiarism-exaggerated-study-suggests">Recent research</a> suggests that pre-internet plagiarism was rife: it’s just that no one really noticed it was happening. </p>
<p>But even if plagiarism has always been there, it is also true that the internet has made the student composition <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602930701772788">process increasingly inter-textual</a>, with students’ laptop screens often a collage of their own evolving essay and other academic (and not-so-academic) sources. While there is nothing wrong with this, if the student then employs a strategy of copying-and-pasting, and then changing a few token words and phrases – or what I call “de-plagiarism” – then it’s still plagiarism, even if it “beats” Turnitin.</p>
<p>All of which brings us back to that conversation with the student who wanted to see their Turnitin report. When they asked why they felt they needed to see it, they admitted to copying and pasting quite large quantities of text and needing Turnitin to help them reduce the percentage of verbatim copying. When I pointed out that this whole approach still constituted academic dishonesty – and hence plagiarism – and that I thought it seriously undermined the spirit of academic endeavour, they were baffled.</p>
<h2>Turn to hand-writing</h2>
<p>Conversations like this, and my own observations of students grappling with essays and dissertations, are making me re-consider the process of composition. At one course on “avoiding plagiarism” I noticed that students who hand-wrote their responses to the various paraphrasing tasks produced better writing than those who had typed them. The hand-written responses were clearer, more concise, and, crucially, unplagiarised. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107758/original/image-20160111-6986-d5c5lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don’t dismiss handwriting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">megaflopp/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/23/reading-writing-on-paper-better-for-brain-concentration">research</a> has suggested that handwriting may trigger more sophisticated cognitive processing: the relative slowness of handwriting seems to promote “mental lifting”, a process of comprehending, mulling and digesting ideas, which seems to reduce verbatim copying.</p>
<p>Of course this isn’t going to stop plagiarism. But it’s an example of a positive small step in the right direction. Instead of tackling plagiarism with reactive measures – such as compulsory classes and writing clinics – surely we should be fostering good writing in the university classroom, writing that doesn’t need to plagiarise in the first place.</p>
<p>Currently, writing is viewed largely as something students “do” after class, by themselves, in their rooms, something that takes care of itself. And yet this is patently <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/univesity-students-they-cant-write-spell-or-present-an-argument-479536.html">not the case</a>. Admittedly, many academics have flown the flag for writing: from Peter Elbow’s brilliant <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N47ALfRWA_8C&redir_esc=y">Writing without Teachers</a> to Rowena Murray’s work on <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bylHBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA123&dq=writing+in+social+spaces&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizo-W9lK7JAhXF6Q4KHbFRC4QQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=writing%20in%20social%20spaces&f=false">bringing academic writing into the mainstream</a>. </p>
<p>With a growing number of university “skills centres” or “writing centres” now being set up in the UK, there is recognition that more needs to be done to integrate writing into the university curriculum. Yet despite notable exceptions such as the <a href="http://www.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk/">Thinking Writing</a> project at Queen Mary University of London, aiming to foster more creative and thoughtful work from students, writing continues to be viewed largely as falling beyond the pale of mainstream academic teaching.</p>
<p>Whether we want to <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/mandatory-academic-writing-classes-theyll-thank-you-for-it-later/412893.article">integrate writing development into our degree curricula</a> – de rigeur in the US – or <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VFQU4Nyt4zMC&dq=teaching+academic+writing+in+uk+higher+education&lr=">embed writing within existing curricula</a>, we need to be doing more than simply making Turnitin reports available to students. This simply encourages a jumping-through-hoops, cut-and-paste strategy, instead of real writing and real thinking. And if handwriting can lead to better thinking and better writing, I think we shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Wrigley works for the Centre for the Development of Academic Skills at Royal Holloway, University of London. </span></em></p>More handwritten tasks could force students to avoid the dreaded cut and paste.Stuart Wrigley, Teaching Fellow, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/521922015-12-16T10:56:36Z2015-12-16T10:56:36ZDoes it matter that Greenpeace journalists lied in order to expose academics-for-hire?<p>Earlier this fall, Greenpeace <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/09/greenpeace-hires-investigative-journalists-meiron-jones">announced</a> it was hiring a team of journalists and making investigations a pillar of its advocacy work. </p>
<p>Now the public is beginning to see the fruits of that investment, as well as some of the questions that get raised when advocacy groups utilize some of journalism’s more controversial reporting tactics.</p>
<p>Last week, the group <a href="http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/12/08/exposed-academics-for-hire/">published</a> a report showing how two American academics agreed to write papers in support of – and covertly funded by – the fossil fuel industry. </p>
<p>To get the story, Greenpeace’s journalists posed as energy company representatives and offered to pay the academics – who were both prominent climate change skeptics – to write about the benefits of coal use and carbon emissions. They also asked that the payments not be disclosed. The academics agreed. (You can read the email exchanges <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2642398-Email-Chain-Frank-Clemente.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2642410-Email-Chain-Happer-O-Keefe-and-Donors-Trust.html">here</a>.)</p>
<p>In many ways, Greenpeace’s reporting nicely approximates journalistic ideals of watchdog reporting. It builds on previous work by <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VmtgTYR138F">advocacy groups</a> and <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming">news organizations</a> that has revealed the hidden ties between the industry and climate change skeptics. Where others have focused on the role of corporations in funding the work of climate skeptics, this report highlights the willingness of academics to lend their scientific credibility to support the aims of industry. </p>
<p>This reporting also represents a new direction for Greenpeace. Long known for its <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=KNQNHYU0mDAC">savvy staging of media events</a>, the group’s journalistic efforts signal a desire to provide the public with credible information about an important issue. These efforts dovetail with similar work being done by human rights groups, including <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/">Amnesty International</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news">Human Rights Watch</a>. On all of these grounds, the report is a positive flashpoint in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-greenpeace-hires-journalists-its-a-double-edged-sword-47398">increasing role advocacy groups are playing in the provision of news</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, Greenpeace’s embrace of deceptive reporting practices raises longstanding questions about the acceptability of such tactics. These questions take on special importance in the climate change debate, which has seen efforts to discredit scientific experts by revealing their private communications. </p>
<p>Earlier this month, Representative Lamar Smith – chair of the House Science Committee and a climate change skeptic – <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/science/chief-of-house-science-panel-picks-battle-over-climate-paper.html">subpoenaed</a> the emails of scientists who have published research that Smith disagrees with. </p>
<p>Deceptive reporting is sometimes justified, and some of the best American journalism in the past century is the <a href="http://brookekroeger.com/undercover-reporting-the-truth-about-deception/">product of deceptive tactics</a>. Nelly Bly’s 1887 <a href="http://dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/i-behind-asylum-bars-nellie-bly-new-york-world">exposé</a> of conditions inside psychiatric wards required undercover techniques, as did the Washington Post’s 2007 <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html">reporting</a> about the poor treatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.</p>
<p>The question, then, is not whether such deceptive reporting is permissible, but when.</p>
<p>Typically, arguments in favor of deceptive reporting center on the disparity between the small deceits required of reporters and the larger deceptions they reveal. Industry funds academics, but the very nature of the collaboration makes it difficult to evaluate its scale and scope. On this view, Greenpeace’s reporters broke the normal rules of reporting by lying about their identity in order to disclose the secret ways that the climate skeptics are funded. </p>
<p>A related rationale is necessity: There needs to be no alternative method of reporting that can succeed in exposing the issue. </p>
<p>In Greenpeace’s recent investigative reporting, it’s not clear if this is true. Previous reporting, some of which Greenpeace has been involved in, suggests that more patient, detailed analyses can shed light on the same issues – without engaging in deception. </p>
<p>Just this year, for example, <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/a-deep-dive-into-what-exxon-knew-about-global-warming-and-when-1978-it-knew-it/">InsideClimate News</a> relied on leaks, lawsuits and freedom of information requests to carefully document when ExxonMobil knew about global warming (and what it did to prevent public action on the matter). </p>
<p>To be sure, Greenpeace is an organization with multiple demands and aims. Such detailed reporting may not have been possible at the moment, especially given the climate talks in Paris that served as an effective news peg for the story. But it’s difficult for the public to know why it chose to go undercover, given the group’s silence on its choice of reporting tactic. </p>
<p>This is unfortunate, because Greenpeace’s credibility is at stake when it engages in deceptive reporting. <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/171740/americans-confidence-news-media-remains-low.aspx">Public confidence in the news media</a> is low, in part because of the use of such tactics (and the broader culture of scandal reporting they create). Is this really a set of practices that advocacy groups want to replicate? </p>
<p>The question begets no single answer. As advocacy groups increasingly assume the role of journalists, questions like these are bound to arise. As they do, it will be important to ask not only about the quality of the information that such groups provide but also to investigate the methods they use to gather it.</p>
<p>Greenpeace rightly stands for openness in the climate change debate. As they embark on their journey in journalism, perhaps they ought to also stand for openness in their own reporting practices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Powers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the public’s confidence in the news media wavering, it’s a tough line to toe.Matthew Powers, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/508742015-12-01T11:06:09Z2015-12-01T11:06:09ZHere’s why academics should write for the public<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103788/original/image-20151130-5677-k49062.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should professors engage with the lay public?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/illinoisspringfield/10140981193/in/photolist-gs8bpk-ovxCWe-bcCwd8-4pBpMt-nFPoHz-g3o77Y-5nFBXC-og3bxh-9XYmxP-ounTxj-byN8Rt-bJpKTz-bJpKRP-viYfmc-bkTgum-byNboB-bkTgom-bkTjfu-byN9xp-byN8Ga-bkTjbs-byN8Xc-byN7b6-bkTggU-owcFLQ-p65rVD-pKs9P6-7TEeao-faLkPa-8Lt8Vc-fr6Bez-3wb99x-otBUq4-bkTk4W-byNb8t-bkTfVJ-byN6wM-byN6Y6-byN8t4-bkTjP3-bkTiPw-bkTiSh-byN8Ex-byNaHa-bkTeaC-byNaPH-bkTiFy-bkTei9-bkTjo9-bkTj1N">Illinois Springfield</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s been much discussion about the needless complexity of academic writing. </p>
<p>In a widely read <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Academics-Writing-Stinks/148989">article</a> in The Chronicle of Higher Education last year, <a href="http://stevenpinker.com/">Steven Pinker</a>, professor of psychology at Harvard and author of several acclaimed books including <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310859/the-sense-of-style-by-steven-pinker/9780143127796/">The Sense of Style</a>, analyzed why academic writing is “turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand.” </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="http://www.huji.ac.il/dataj/controller/ihoker/MOP-STAFF_LINK?sno=576021&Save_t=">Jeff Camhi</a>, professor emeritus of biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discovered how much academic authors struggle when trying to write for a lay audience. He <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Professor-Your-Writing-Could/233902">suggested</a> writing programs should “develop a night course in creative nonfiction writing, specifically for professors.”</p>
<p>We think learning to write creative nonfiction isn’t a bad idea. But we disagree with Camhi’s suggestion that academics need a night course for this. We propose something simpler: academics just need to start writing, getting edited and seeing if the public reads them. Through this process, academics will not only learn to express themselves clearly, but most likely become better scientists as well. </p>
<h2>What are the benefits?</h2>
<p>Although both of us currently write for the public, we come at this from different perspectives – one of us has written for a few years, and the other started writing only this year. </p>
<p>We don’t think we are amazing writers, but we do think writing for the public has helped us improve. The immediate feedback from editors and the public has helped make our writing clearer.</p>
<p>We’ve learned that if we’re not clear and engaging, then editors and the general public simply won’t read us. And that continues to teach us how to improve the next time we write.</p>
<p>Public writing has also improved both our academic writing skills and scientific thinking abilities.</p>
<p>That’s because the first step in improving academic writing is to learn to reduce the jargon academics use and express concepts clearly. And this has forced us to distill our thinking to its absolute core. </p>
<p>Consequently, not only did the process improve the quality of our writing, but it also brought more clarity to the way we were thinking about our scientific problems.</p>
<p>For example, when we recently started to write an academic review article together, we first considered how we could write a piece for the public later based on the review. This helped us reconfigure the way we synthesized the literature, forcing us to discuss it clearly and logically.</p>
<p>Additionally, because public writing engages both the public and our academic colleagues, we’ve found that public commentary can be a form of “public peer review.” Exciting research ideas for academic papers have developed from our public pieces thanks to crowdsourced feedback. </p>
<p>For example, a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201206/brainiacs-and-billionaires">Psychology Today magazine article</a> written by one of us (Wai) led to feedback from editors and others on the importance of studying <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000749">highly educated influential people</a>. This resulted in a series of research papers, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/27/why-top-journalists-are-better-educated-than-billionaires/">discussed subsequently in The Washington Post</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103794/original/image-20151130-26585-1d1vq7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Public engagement brings benefits for an academic career.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brightmeadow/1277740228/in/photolist-2WUKDW-h5AgDG-HvN2R-i4a5Sr-cUBc6q-cFssXu-NQYHJ-5vXtUS-qN4T-xNacfi-5fSAHa-5gkbti-Cvsam-X71N8-5Bz4Y2-o7wcP-6h2kSQ-5TJqnR-6ifpBT-aqQY4X-b9v1LK-dGwfTC-9YwFk-nNoKHj-3JCTjV-5FDznX-iW7afq-5MM51c-333FS1-rj25zy-CMQv-az5spi-4yTKCC-6int3M-wcaDy-7NcEL3-5ruqii-4x7jUo-db2aKJ-NSo35-auPuw5-7Fvho1-5iJp6M-dBT52V-7QVbY9-6h2jvE-8Jkhjr-arK7a4-9bgigX-ffFhz5">Cas</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such public engagement can bring in other benefits for an academic career. For instance, one of us (Miller) traveled to Amsterdam last month to give a keynote address at <a href="http://www.vhto.nl/onderwijs/hoger-onderwijs/hoger-onderwijs-conferentie-gender-stem-2015/sprekers-presentaties/">a conference about gender and science</a>. </p>
<p>The conference organizers found him because of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">attention</a> he received in <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2015/05/science-still-seen-male-profession-according-international-study-gender-bias">popular press</a> about <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000005">an international study</a> that he had led on gender stereotypes in science. That popular press attention was initiated by the author contacting his university’s press office and working closely with its writers to collaboratively draft <a href="http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/05/gender-science-stereotypes-persist-across-the-world.html">a press release</a>. </p>
<p>In both our cases, public engagement opened up opportunities to network with academics and others within and outside our fields. And this happened only because people read the public pieces we had written. </p>
<h2>It’s that simple</h2>
<p>Writing for the public requires improving one’s skills, just the way it does for writing an academic article or a grant proposal. Yes, there is a “start-up cost” as you learn the ropes. But it isn’t as time-consuming as many academics may think.</p>
<p>In fact, both of us were very cautious when we first started to write for the public. We were even skeptical of its benefits given the perceived time cost. But earlier this year, one of us (Miller) learned how easy this process is. </p>
<p>He learned about <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract">a controversial study</a> that he wanted to place in a broader context for the public. So he submitted a 199-word pitch that night to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us">The Conversation</a>, which encourages academics to write for the public. An editor replied the next morning giving advice on how to structure and write the piece for clarity. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/some-good-news-about-hiring-women-in-stem-doesnt-erase-sex-bias-issue-40212">The 765-word article</a> took just one day to draft and one day to refine with the editor – lightning fast compared to academic journals. The Atlantic’s Quartz <a href="http://qz.com/385375/good-news-about-hiring-women-in-stem-but-its-not-enough/">republished the article</a>, which has now reached over 25,000 readers. Consider how most academic articles are read by only a handful of people.</p>
<p>We now believe that public writing is part and parcel of our identities as scholars.</p>
<h2>Engage with the public to have social impact</h2>
<p>Now that we’ve discussed some of the benefits of public writing and why we think academics should do it, we conclude by addressing one important structural component to the solution. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ucop.edu/president/">president</a> of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-scientists-are-needed-in-the-public-square-46451">recently argued</a> that more scientists are needed in the public square to communicate the importance of science. We couldn’t agree more. </p>
<p>But what she did not mention is that more scientists are needed in the public square to become clearer and better writers as well. As we said earlier, that clarity can bring other indirect and direct benefits for science and scientists’ careers.</p>
<p>So why aren’t more academics writing for the public? </p>
<p>Well, it’s really quite simple. There’s little incentive built into the reward and promotion system, something Steven Pinker noted as well. Perhaps administrators need to include public engagement on equal footing as teaching, advising, publishing, and grant-getting in the tenure review process. </p>
<p>Many academics, including us, now realize that if we want to reach people who might benefit from our research, we have to step out of the ivory tower. We academics need to enter the discussion that the rest of the world engages in every day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Miller receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Wai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two scholars discuss the joys of writing for a lay audience. So why aren’t more academics writing for the public?Jonathan Wai, Research Scientist, Duke UniversityDavid Miller, Doctoral Student in Psychology, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.