Project investigators: PIs: Dr James Burford (Warwick), Dr Lynette Pretorius (Monash). Co-Is: Dr Michael Henderson (Monash), Dr Sara Hattersley (Warwick).

Project background

Academic writing is a key component of doctoral success and is closely linked to a researcher’s sense of identity. Increasingly, the focus on doctoral writing development stretches beyond mastering the thesis genre and toward academic publishing. However, the academic publication process is fraught with complexity and layered with tacit knowledge. As a consequence, writing for publication is often linked with significant anxiety for doctoral students, leading to imposter feelings and career development concerns.

This project develops a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) experience for Monash University and Warwick University doctoral students doing educational research. Through this project, students from both institutions have the opportunity to work collaboratively to develop a peer-reviewed article for publication. Experienced staff will guide students during this journey, helping students learn about the publication process through the lived experience of developing a publication. In the project’s second year, the focus will shift to evaluating the outcomes of the educational innovation. Key outcomes of the project include developing participating students’ skills and publishing identities as well as developing and disseminating an established model for forming future COIL writing group collaborations between Monash and Warwick universities via briefings, seminars and learning resources produced by the project team.

Project objectives

This project utilises a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) approach to develop an innovative educational project in this area. COIL projects have gained increasing recognition as important educational experiences for students. COIL projects link the learning experiences of two classrooms from different higher education institutions together. In this way, the curriculum can be internationalised, something which is a key focus of both participating universities’ strategic plans.

Importantly, these institutions need to be in different countries or cultural settings, thereby creating environments which emphasise cross-cultural understanding through experiential and collaborative learning. COIL projects also provide students with the opportunity to learn digital literacy skills, a key transferable skill set in the digital knowledge economy. The proposed project’s objectives include:

1) The establishment of two COIL doctoral writing groups with participating doctoral students from Warwick and Monash which will develop two publications on topics relevant to the learning of the group itself. These publications will be ready for submission to peer-reviewed journals within the first year.

2) The evaluation of the impact of the COIL doctoral writing groups in terms of the skill development and scholarly identity formation of participating students.

3) The documentation of our practice of COIL doctoral writing groups as enduring resources, which could be utilised in further Warwick-Monash collaborations and across disciplines.

Project overview

Phase 1: project set-up activities (EOIs); ethics application, develop project website, EOIs and writing group formation.

Phase 2: 6 months of collaborative writing and writing workshops with 2 writing groups.

Phase 3: 6 months engaging in the process of seeking to publish papers involving collaboration with project facilitators in addressing potential peer review feedback.

Phase 4: project evaluation.

Phase 5: writing up the results of project evaluation into publication.

Phase 6: project wrap up; development of project briefing and finalising learning resources to share on the project website.