Writing Innovation Studio (Spring 2020)

Abstract

The goal of the course is to enable students to become better writers mastering a variety of text-genres - academic as well as commercial.

Description

Writing is an essential craft. Yet few, except professional writers, take the time to develop this skill. Writing clear, concise, and compelling arguments–knowing how to construct and tell a persuasive story–is crucial across industry and the digital world. Well-designed narratives can change the fortunes of a product, community, or company.

This is a practice-based course that will provide students with a set of word crafting tools and an online studio space to explore how to write for the public, industry colleagues, executive management, and academic specialists. Students will gain experience in creative writing techniques and storytelling, along with tools for working with diverse empirical data. They will learn how to transform given research material and ideas into compelling texts in a variety of formats, from press releases and executive summaries, to podcasts and editorial blog posts.

Emphasis is on written communication, but spoken and visual communication skills will also be included. Students will learn how to present and write for both conventional text, and a range of multimedia and digital platforms.

Formal prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites for this course.

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Identify reliable, trustworthy empirical and scientific data, in contrast to unreliable or non-scientific data
• Summarise the key arguments in an extended academic text
• Apply literary writing skills, such as Point of View shifts and Storytelling approaches, to academic writing
• Demonstrate competent and clear written communication in an extended piece of writing
• Analyse and reflect on the effectiveness of different writing techniques for different written formats
• Apply and reflect upon an innovative writing technique in a chosen written format

Learning activities

Writing Studio

There will be an online, public blog maintained as part of the course. Students are expected to write for this blog, and to publish their work live. The blog and student's writing will be publicised through twitter and other social media. Students will also be expected to make constructive comments on the blog.

Writing Work

Students will produce 6 different finished pieces of writing during the course. Each piece of writing will focus on a different writing skill, and provide experience of different writing formats. Formats might include: press release, executive summary, podcast script, blog editorial, project report, abstract. Students will submit a portfolio of their best 4 pieces of work as part of their final exam.

Writing Workshop

There will be no lectures. Instead, students must attend weekly Writing Workshops. These are practice-based spaces where students will be introduced to a new writing skill, and will then be expected to produce writing, and to critique the writing of their peers. Visual and spoken techniques will also form part of these workshops. These workshops will be a creative, supportive space where students can experiment with their writing, take risks, and develop new writing skills.

Writing Journal

Students will be expected to keep a writing journal throughout the course. This can be digital or on paper. The journal will form the basis for their personal writing practice and development of good, regular writing habits.

Course literature

The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.

Student Activity Budget

Estimated distribution of learning activities for the typical student

• Preparation for lectures and exercises: 25%
• Lectures: 15%
• Exercises: 50%
• Exam with preparation: 10%

Ordinary exam

Exam type:
C: Submission of written work, internal (7-trinsskala)
Exam variation:
C: Submission of written work

Time and date