ENHANCING PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY AMONG DOCTORAL STUDENT – A CASE STUDY FROM AALTO UNIVERSITY

Writing for Publication

ENHANCING PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY AMONG DOCTORAL STUDENT – A CASE STUDY FROM AALTO UNIVERSITY

Pia Lappalainen

Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Publication productivity constitutes a key measure of institutional and researcher performance, determining success in university rankings and academic career development. [1], [2] Against this background, surprisingly little support has thus far been available for doctoral students at Aalto University. As a remedy, a Writing Doctoral Research course was designed for Aalto engineers. To build a relevant and domain­specific course for doctoral students, their needs were examined quantitatively (n=290) and qualitatively (n=74). The aim was to identify pedagogy for raising the quality of publications and to speed up the writing process. These two investigations show that 1) in the absence of sufficient supervision, engineers require more support in the writing­related mental processes, 2) engineers lack means to accurately express their research aims, and 3) the mechanics of writing needs to focus on structuring and sentencing of the introduction section, 4) students lack variety, precision and hedging strategies in data commentary, and 5) rhetoric and argumentation strategies are subsidiary to mechanistic referencing or summarizing in engineering texts. Instead of the traditional functional approach, the course was subsequently designed within the framework of the conceptual approach, especially to align with the principles of enculturation. [3] This emphasizes researcher identity, profiling and personal voice, while focusing on the reporting and structural conventions in engineering and the field­specific academic style. Particular emphasis was placed on the writer’s block, as the respondents expressed anxiety similar to the blank page syndrome and required strategies in getting started with their writing. Process writing together with tools enhancing sketching and outlining upon initial drafting were selected as additional pedagogic foci. The feedback on this locally novel course demonstrates that 1) academic communication strategies help conceptualize overall research aims and perception of the broader research process, 2) a writing course can effectively expedite research progress by providing targeted support in style, structuring, researcher positioning and text readability, 3) on the doctoral level, authenticity of the course materials is a pedagogic necessity, and 4) mental support provided outside the supervisor­doctoral student relationship yields benefits for student well­being and productivity.

References

[1] Kamler, B. (2008) Rethinking doctoral publication practices: Writing from and beyond the thesis. Studies in Higher Education, 33(3), 283­294.

[2] Cotterall, S. (2011) Doctoral students writing: where's the pedagogy?. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(4), 413­425.

[3] Lee, A., & Kamler, B. (2008) Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(5), 511­523.