Craft of writing series in Solent CPD series

1. A 100 visions and revisions
before the taking of toast and tea:
structuring and editing your work
Tansy Jessop & Claire Saunders
SLTI CPD Workshop
8 February 2018
@solentlearning

2. Your Writing BASE
www.writersdiet.com/base
Behavioural
habits
Emotional habits
Social habits
Artisanal habits

3. Blood, sweat and toil

4. Submitted to BERJ
Evaluating the impact of Lecture Capture on Staff’s Academic Practice through the
UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) – A Mixed-Methods Study
Abstract: Lecture Capture (LC) technologies are being rapidly deployed in UK Higher
Education Institutions (HEIs). A significant proportion of the existing literature
establishes the impact of LC on students and their learning experience. It is less clear,
however, how the use of LC has impacted on lecturers’ own academic practice. This
paper presents a mixed-methods study that uses a web survey and semi-structured
interviews to examine LC’s perceived impact on staff’s academic practice. The UK
Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) has been used to frame multiple
dimensions of academic practice. The results of our statistical tests on quantitative
data and thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed that the LC has impacted
staffs’ core knowledge, their commitment to professional values and certain
academic practices, including their Continued Professional Development (CPD) and
self- evaluation. Our findings reveal that the mere fact of recording lectures enable
staff become more conscious of their own practice and they tend to become more
engaging, self-evaluating, continuously improving, inclusive, values-based
practitioners. Implications and recommendations for encouraging LC’s application
across the sector to improve academic practice are discussed.
Keywords: Lecture Capture, Academic practice, Higher Education, Learning
Technology, UKPSF

5. Reviewer
Feedback

6. Reviewer 2 was busy...

7. Key
Obscure imprecise phrases
‘Throat clearing’, to sound academic
Passive voice, hides agent, lacks life
Wordy, TMI, not lean as Cassius
Tired metaphors
Unsubstantiated claims - criticality?

8. Revise and resubmit

9. Your task
• In pairs, choose a paragraph from the first draft and
talk through editing decisions (verbally and with your
pencil!)
• What principles did you adopt in editing? Articulate
and list two or three things you did to make the text
stronger.

10. Your principles

11. Editing 101: rules of thumb
1. No one does anything
creative by merely
following the rules. All
writing is creative.
2. Read good models outside
of your discipline
3. Read your work out aloud

12. Five rules of thumb
1. Scan for passive constructions and change to active:
people do things and make things happen.
Why? Hides the agent, depersonalises, makes
sentences lumpy and long
2. Use fewer words. No throat-clearing. Tell it like it is.
Make it lean as Cassius.
Simple test: does it make a difference if I remove the
word? Does it change the meaning? If it doesn’t, take
it out.

13. Five rules of thumb
3. Avoid repetition: Be precise and clear first time
round. Ruthlessly trim repeated phrases.
Why? Because repetition is boring
4. Choose concrete over abstract words every time:
what do ‘complex’ and ‘relational’ mean?
5. Metaphors: old metaphors have no power: abandon
‘terrain’, ‘cutting edge’ and metaphors you no longer
recognise as metaphors

14. References
Becker, H. (2007) Writing for Social Scientists. Chicago. University of Chicago
Press.
Boice, R. (1990) Professors as Writers: A self-help guide to productive writing.
Oklahoma. New Forum.
Grant, B. (2006) Writing in the company of other women: exceeding the
boundaries, Studies in Higher Education, 31:4, 483-495.
Harland, A. (2015) Writing for Publication Workshop, University of Winchester.
Jessop and Penny (1999) A story behind a story: Developing strategies for
making sense of teacher narratives. International Journal of Social Research
Methodology. 2:3. 213-230.
Richardson, L. (1990) Writing Strategies: reaching diverse audiences. Thousand
Oaks. California. Sage.
Sword, H. (2017) Writing to the Heights and From the Heart. Conference
keynote. ISSOTL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52WT2YlxpI0
Sword, H. (2017) Air & Light & Time & Space: How successful academics write.
Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press.
Sword, H. (2013) Stylish Academic Writing. Cambridge. MA. Harvard University
Press.
Sword, H. (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQsRvAVSVeM
Sword, H. (2009) Writing higher education differently: a manifesto on style,
Studies in Higher Education, 34:3, 319-336.