Customized Presentations for Your Group
I currently have four prepackaged programs that can be customized to meet your group's needs. All are deliverable remotely or in person, appropriate for faculty or graduate students, and are cost-effective ways to deliver professional devleopment to your group. All ready-to-deliver presentations can be scheduled and customized within a month's notice and cost $200 for up to 20 participants and $250 for more. Any of my other workshops can be customized for your group with 6 weeks' notice. Please note: slide deck distribution is not possible unless required for ADA purposes.From To Do to Done: Time and Project Management for Dissertations and Books
From To Do to Done: Your roadmap to effective project planning for dissertation and book-scale undertakings!Anyone in business can tell you that projects require active management. You can't just wave your hands at them and expect them to organize themselves. Yet academics rarely invest time and energy into their projects, and it shows. This workshop introduces three levels of planning, strategic, operational, and tactical, and a collection of project management tools to facilitate effective organization. Participants end the workshop with the beginnings of long-, medium-, and short-term planning calendars, and a collection of useful tools and links.
Core Content- Three Levels of Planning
- Timeline Management Tools
- Disassembling Steps into Actionable Tasks
- Effective To-Do Lists and Time Management
- Goals and Accountability
Helping Strugglimg Graduate Student Writers
Helping Struggling Writers: Hands-on introduction to strategies and tools for your toughest cases!Faculty widely bemoan their lack of training in teaching, and especially in teaching writing. We just expect students will be adequately capable on their own or that they will seek help elsewhere. At this level, though, faculty members' specailized substantive expertise is almost always necessary to help students out of the logjam. This interactive workshop for faculty, in online or in-person format, provides concrete strategies for working with graduate students on common writing challenges.
Core Content- Writing Challenges
- Argument Development Tools
- Tools for Structure Development
- Mastering Literature Reviews
- Effective Feedback Strategies
Word for Dissertations and Books
Introducing Word for Dissertations and Books - 90 minutes that will change your academic life for the better!
Did you know that Word can generate your table of contents, table of figures, and all that nonsense for you? Learn to use styles, captioning and other strategies so that you can take advantage of the powerful built-in tools in Word and simplify the assembly of your dissertation, thesis, or book manuscript. This interactive workshop will give you the opportunity to employ these techniques on sample materials. Hosting group may be asked to provide one or more additional virtual assistants to trouble-shoot with participants. (This course is offered once per term with open enrollment.)
Core Content- Styles
- Captions
- Section Breaks
- Spacing Management
- Tables of Contents, Figures, etc.
- File Insertion and Document Assembly Techniques
Me, You, and the Lit Review
Introducing Me, You, and the Lit Review - 2 hours that will pay dividends over and over!
The literature review serves a purpose, and it's not simply to demonstrate that you did your homework prior to writing the paper. Literature reviews need to engage the audience (me) with your research question (you) to guide the reader to a desired end, in support of the claims you make. This interactive workshop will give you the opportunity to employ these techniques on sample materials. Workshop works well for social sciences, most natural sciences, and those humanities fields that write conventional literature reviews (i.e., not historiographies or similar). Hosting group may be asked to provide one or more additional virtual assistants to trouble-shoot with participants and ensure conformity to disciplinary norms. (This course is offered once per term with open enrollment.)
Core Content- Strategies for Organizing Material
- Considering and Engaging Your Audience
- Funnel and Leading Techniques
- Integrating Sources
- Changing Angles
During the workshop, if you request assistance, it may be necessary to share your screen with me and the other participants so that I can troubleshoot with you. This is why we use a set of premade practice material, so that no personal information is shared if this is necessary. (Your background and other visible documents may be visible to other participants; minimize anything you don't want seen.) You will be given a link to download the *.zip file of practice documents at the start of the workshop. This workshop has a brief (approx. 10 page) reading assignment to be completed prior to the session.
Outlining For Academics
So many of us try to outline, but we don't know how to maximize its effectiveness. Outlining For Academics bridges the gap between theory and practice to make outlining work for you!
Instruction in the skill of outlining stopped in most American schools 30-40 years ago. As a result, a whole generation (or more) of academics (and students in general) have not learned how to this effectively. Bulleted lists are no substitute for correct outlining technique. In 90 interactive minutes, we'll cover the function and structure of outlines then practice on some student-generated material. We'll also differentiate between the uses of regular and "reverse" outlines.
Core Content- Core Characteristics of an Outline
- Building an Outline
- The "Reverse Outline"
- The Value of an Outline
- Multi-Level Outlining for Large Projects
Customized Courses
My small-group Book Development Workshop for faculty, as well as the mixed-level Advanced Academic Writing and Stats, Then and Now courses are available at custom times and with customized content for groups of 6 or more. Group discounts from published rates are possible if a college or department wants to organize a session. Because of scheduling constraints on my end, courses typically begin and end within a single term (Jan-Apr, May-Aug, Sept-Dec), unless we specifically discuss otherwise. I realize this term demarcation does not align with many European universities, and I am willing to work with you as much as I can.