Dear All,
I hope you will want to get involved in this virtual project run by the
London Metropolitan Writing Centre. Please read Pete's message below,
log on, and help us spread the word!
Regards,
Katherine
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Dear colleagues and friends of the London Met Writing Centre,
Can I draw your attention to an exciting project that begins this Monday
which I hope you might be interested in?
One of our undergraduate Writing Mentors, Lynn Reynolds (a student in
Psychology), has rather bravely volunteered to write a Psychology essay
online over the next few weeks. She will record every aspect of her
writing process, including her freewrites, her drafts, her revisions and
anything else. She will be keeping a blog with her reflections on the
process, she will publish drafts on a pbwiki, and, inspired by
quickmuse.com, she will use text capturing software so that we can see
her revising her essay in real time (hopefully with a fast forward
option for those who may have other things to do...). We think that
this could prove to be an interesting resource, since it will take
students through the whole process of writing and show them the highs
and the lows! They will get a real sense of what writing an essay is
about. We will arrange for the final essay to be marked by a Psychology
lecturer, who will be using assessment criteria that Lynn will be
thinking about as she writes the essay.
We are hoping that as many people as possible will contribute to this
project. It will be possible to comment on the blog entries and to give
encouragement. We will also be able to make suggestions for improving
the actual essay directly on the pbwiki, although it will be up to Lynn
to decide if she wants to accept any of these suggestions. This is NOT
an essay that is being written as part of Lynn's degree, so there won't
be any ethical problems in any of this, and we will hopefully see how
helpful the kind of collaboration and writerly encouragement that goes
on in a writing centre can be.
The topic of the essay is on "working memory", a subject Lynn is
interested in but of which she has no special knowledge.
It would be really great if as many people as possible participated in
this project. We've already had expressions of interest from the US and
Canada, and Muriel Harris, editor of the Writing Lab Newsletter, has
asked us to write two articles about the experiment. Obviously, the
more who take part and the wider the range of input, the more
interesting the project will be. And if you could send this
announcement to any academics, students, writers or anyone else who you
think might be interested in the project, we would be very grateful.
Lynn is a mature student, who is also a novelist and who thinks very
deeply about writing. She and I have discussed at length issues of
disciplinarity and the relationship between life writing and
disciplinary writing. I'm sure her reflections will be worth reading.
We plan to start this Monday, 12th February, and we hope that you will
log on and spread the word!
http://evolvingessay.pbwiki.com
http://anessayevolves.blogspot.com
Thanks, Pete
Dr Peter O'Neill
Writing Specialist
London Metropolitan University Writing Centre
WRITE NOW CETL
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Katherine Harrington
Director, Write Now
Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
London Metropolitan University
Calcutta House
Old Castle Street
London E1 7NT
Tel. 020 7320 2254
FAX 020 7320 1236
http://www.writenow.ac.uk
http://www.assessmentplus.net
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