Shut up, Write Up: Early Career Researchers writing retreat

What did you want to achieve in this project?

We had several aims in this project, with the overall goal to support PostDocs and PhD students in the early stages of their careers. Through these writing retreats we wanted to support them in the approach to key ‘writing up’ milestones in their research and help them develop academic support through peer learning discussions. We wanted to use these to help generate inter-discipline connections which could provide researchers with new techniques and approaches to writing practices, with the overarching goal of helping participants’ begin to think about writing as a generative practice and a learning tool, with staff partnership and dissemination of reports and tools, to support their future academic careers.

What happpened in the project? Did you need to make any changes? 

We ran a pilot retreat with EDEN Early Career Researchers’ Network in Summer 2017- this was a successful event which attracted many attendees (majority PhD students, minority postdocs), and gave us a mailing list for future retreats. It also gave us good feedback on participants preferences in terms of formatting which we could take forward for future events. In addition, we could pilot our evaluation in the form of an online survey and a pre-retreat planning task.

We were able to run our first retreat earlier than planned in November 2017. At our original meeting with the Changemakers team, we changed our strategy from the original application of one retret to two- which eventually became three. We removed some expenditure areas from our original budget due to feedback from our pilot event- we had originally planned incentives for talks from Early Career Researchers to share their writing strategies for others to learn from, but most people attending the pilot said they preferred to dedicate the time to writing instead. We exceeded our expectations on budgeting and participation!

The IoE’s Academic Writing Centre were very enthusiastic in their partnership with the project. They offered to facilitate an informal hour long discussion, even setting up a dedicated Moodle for participants over the course of the events.

What were the main successes? 

We conducted participant feedback, in-session discussions, and reflective observations to evaluate what we had done on the project: 

• We had a high number of repeat participants, with the average of a no-show only one per retreat
• Felt like a community and people interacted between events, generating a positive, productive, and friendly group atmosphere
• Made new friends, with participants holding social activities and dinners outside of retreats 
• Produced spin-off groups (meet-ups between ‘formal’ retreats)
• Participants were actively involved and invested, and worked together towards the success of the group as a whole 
• Interacted with the Academic Writing Centre and contributed to the potential enlargement of their provision for IoE Doctoral Students in the future 
• A direct impact on their academic achievement: people achieved the goals they had set, which raised morale for everyone and celebrated each other’s successes. Following a retreat, two participants submitted their thesis, using the space as a support for the last hurdle
• Provided opportunities for part-time students and those with childcare responsibilities

  Overall, we think this was a successful and productive project which enhanced the experience of being an Early Career Researcher, especially with later stage doctoral students for whom ‘writing up’ can be time-consuming and isolating.“

What would you do differently? Why?

Whilst the format was successful and there were no significant structural changes- but we have some ideas for the development which would enhance the experience. 

Outside of our pilot session, the retreats were attended only by mid to late stage doctoral students. This worked well as we realised, although technically ECRs, postdocs and doctoral students had different needs. Generally postdocs brought in a wide range of tasks in the pilot retreat and were less interested in discussing writing strategies for chapter or thesis sized projects. Doctoral students found the group discussion more useful. In the future we would plan to target the retreats specifically for doctoral students, as they have different needs. As it was a peer-led project, it was sometimes hard to provide authority and a welcoming environment at the same time. 

We would like to experiment with different formats like trying more frequent but shorter retreats or more peer-review of work.

What difference do you think your project made? 

We identified many benefits through discussion, self-reflection and evaluations which we are proud of: 

• Sharing goals, as this held people accountable to what they said they would do- they would therefore not go off on a tangent 
• More productive than working alone, and the retreats increased their focus 
• Helped to banish procrastination as were on campus- not at home where they could procrastinate by tiding flats and other things 
• Made friends and colleagues 
• Felt part of a research community. Some attendees came from small IOE departments and rarely saw their colleagues, and the retreats made them feel part of the university and feel valued by it
• People shared digital writing tools and writing strategies, documented on moodle 
• Saved money and time- food was provided so they didn’t have to buy or queue up at lunch
• The regular schedule helped mid and long term planning

What was it like doing a ChangeMakers project?

We feel that being funded to carry our project made us feel supported and valued as members of UCL. We think the programme was well structured, with lots of support for less experienced students. 

The best thing about it was that we were able to frame our projects with the backing and investment of UCL Changemakers, which helped to transform and formalise our existing informal meetings. With this help we were able to triple our regular participants, plan formally, and get the involvement from the Academic Writing Centre. For the last 2 years we tried to leverage support for student-led writing events from UCL for room bookings and catering- having the support of changemakers and a stipend made us feel valued and respected for the time we put into our work. 

The ChangeMakers team were always approachable and happy to help- we were able to focus on the changes we wanted without getting bogged down in bureaucracy!

What advice would you give to any students thinking of getting involved?

Give it a go! Be smart with resources and how you budget your stipend. Think about what you need to prioritise to achieve your project aims. Make use of drop-in sessions and advice from past projects! Don’t be shy about discussing your ideas and asking questions!