Workshops provide practical advice on a range of writing topics, including developing productive writing habits, balancing teaching and scholarly productivity, and managing large research projects.
Fall 2024
Generating Momentum in Your Projects
Friday, September 27 | 8:30-10:00 | Virtual
We’re all busy. Sometimes time passes between writing sessions. It can be frustrating to feel like you’re always starting over, or to return to a project unsure of where you left off and what to do next. In this session, you’ll learn some quick, powerful ways to generate momentum on your writing projects, even when you can’t work on them as often as you want. Attendees of the Write Winning NIH Grant Proposals and the Writing and Publishing High-Impact Research Manuscripts seminars are invited to attend this workshop to continue your progress on writing your proposal or publication. For more information: researchinitiatives@duke.edu
Regularly Offered Workshops
Applying Retreat Insights to Your Pedagogy
In this three-session workshop series participants design learning experiences that empower students as writers in their discipline. Includes course development and assignment design. For Summer Scholarly Writing Retreat Alumni.
Balancing Teaching and Scholarship: A Fall Course Planning Workshop
At the start of every semester, do you hope that, finally, this will be the one when you don't get overwhelmed by teaching? When you also make progress on your writing and research? When you make a realistic plan for how you will spend your time, and then actually stick to it? In this workshop, award-winning teacher Monique Dufour will show you how you can optimize your time and promote student learning. Learn why it's hard to manage the time you spend on teaching, why you should, and how you can.
Beyond Productivity
We are more than a measure of our outputs. This popular workshop helps writers consider strategies that will help them meet their writing goals in ways that are meaningful, manageable, and applicable to their own writing contexts.
Creating Space for Engaged Scholarship
Engaged scholars face the challenge of balancing many commitments, including scholarship, teaching, and partnerships. In this workshop, we will discuss how to begin to establish your priorities, and to align them with faculty evaluation standards. Participants will (1) Establish their goals as engaged scholars; (2) Consider how they may align their goals with their priorities and faculty evaluation standards; (3) Discuss planning and writing strategies to make progress on their priorities.
End-of-Semester Feedback & Grading Session (Grading Party!)
Faculty write and faculty teach. Gather with faculty across disciplines who are responding to student final projects, and set aside time to grade in good company. Snacks and beverages provided to fuel your efforts. Drop in as your schedule allows. We'll used timed sessions to keep us focused and allow for breaks and time to connect with others.
Get Writing Groups to Work for You
How can writing groups help you advance your scholarship during the academic year? Faculty who’ve participated in writing groups will share their own motivations, successes, and strategies. Participants will (1) Learn about different types of writing groups; (2) Identify which type of writing group may work best for them; (3) Learn how to join existing groups or start their own.
Get Your Writing Moving: Health and Well-Being
Join Sarah Wilbur (dance) and Jennifer Ahern-Dodson (writing) for a workshop series focused on writing as an embodied practice. Learn strategies that help you focus, create space for your writing in your day, and recognize and address physical stressors that may be stalling healthy writing practices. Each workshop includes an introduction to a strategy, independent writing time to practice the strategy, and resources.
How to Cultivate a Reader Network
How can you cultivate readers for your work and get useful feedback on your writing-in-progress? How can you limit the reader feedback you don’t need? In this workshop, participants will learn a range of strategies for asking for and getting feedback from different types of readers in a range of contexts, including writing groups, mentors and editors, and co-authors.
Overcoming Writing Blocks
When you sit down to write, do you find it difficult to begin? Never seem to have time to finish those manuscripts? Having trouble finding motivation to write a grant? Maybe you have a paper in the final stages but it doesn’t feel good enough to submit? In this workshop, we'll discuss a framework for understanding writing blocks, how to move past them, and how to build momentum for your work.
Publishing Community-Engaged Scholarship
In this workshop, participants will learn (1) strategies to identify potential outlets for publishing community-engaged research and teaching; (2) tools to help communicate their work to diverse audiences, including community partners, undergraduate and graduate students, and professional review committees
Writing Group Convener Training
Want to start a writing group, but not sure where to begin? Are you currently convening a group, but no one seems to get any writing done? Or your group gets off to a good start, but writers stop attending as the semester gets busy? Are you wondering what works best for convening virtual writing groups? Training includes strategies and useful tools for keeping a group organized, motivated, and supportive of each other's goals. Also includes frameworks for participant reflection and goal setting.
Additional workshops include: Developing a Semester Writing Plan, Making Space for Writing as an Administrator, Revising Your Writing Space, and Supporting Graduate Students as Writers. New workshops are added regularly throughout the year. Check back often.
