International Collaborative Writing Groups: The ICWG-Public Track
ICWG-Public cohorts focus on writing for audiences beyond the educational community to produce public SoTL, or works of public scholarship informed by SoTL.
In her ISSOTL19 closing keynote entitled “SoTL as Public Scholarship,” Nancy Chick explained how public SoTL “extends the purpose of SoTL toward advocacy, its audiences toward a broader public, its products toward more public forms of communication, and its influence beyond courses and academic programs. This outreach model begins with the recognition that SoTL and public scholarship have common roots in Ernest Boyer’s expansion of recognized scholarships: his notion of ‘the scholarship of teaching’ (1990) grew into SoTL, and his later description of ‘the scholarship of engagement’ (1996) encompasses what we now call public scholarship, with the goal of developing spaces where ‘the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and more creatively with each other’ in order to ‘connect the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems.’” (Read the book chapter based on this keynote here.)
Forming the First ICWG-Public Cohort
The Co-Leaders selected for the inaugural ICWG-Public cohort are
- James Cronin, University College Cork. Ireland
- Henk Huijser, Queensland University of Technology. Australia
- Siobhán McPhee, University of British Columbia. Canada
- Janel Seeley, University of Wyoming. USA
See the Timeline below. Calls for participation will be distributed through the monthly ISSOTL newsletter, posted on the ISSOTL blog, and linked to the right.
Timeline
| Late 2021-early 2022 | Co-Leaders form the groups first by selecting the group facilitators. (See the call for applications for facilitators here, and the call for applications for group participants here.) |
| April 1, 2022 | The cohort of groups convene and begin working together remotely. |
| Oct 30-Nov 5, 2022 | After working together at a distance, the cohort gathers in person for ISSOTL22, first participating in a pre-conference working session (Oct 30-Nov 1), and then attending the ISSOTL conference (Nov 2-5). |
| Nov 2022-Oct 2023 | The cohort and individual groups continue working remotely until the completion of their projects. |
| Oct 2023 | Each group has completed and shared its public artifact with appropriate audiences. |
ICWG-Public Products
The products of the ICWGs-Public will be more public modes of writing, in forms aimed at audiences beyond academics, such as white papers, public statements on pressing issues, material for mainstream media, web resources, public art installations or performances, or series of blog posts, podcasts, or audio-visual content.
- See descriptions of other possible products in “Public SoTL: Amplifying the Purposes, Audiences, and Products of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.”
- See the “Imagining Public SoTL” blog post for what public SoTL might be about, as well as a couple of tools to help envision public SoTL projects.
ICWG-Public as Part of ISSOTL’s ICWG Initiative
To review the broader ICWG initiative and its history in ISSOTL, how ICWGs work, and the frequency and schedule, visit the ICWG page.