Evaluating the Impact of ‘Write Now’ Sessions: Adapting Approaches from Academic Writing Retreats to Create a Learning Community of Student Writers on A233

• Project Team: Debbie Parker KinchAnactoria ClarkeJasmine Hunter Evans
• Subject Discipline: Arts and Humanities
• Theme: Equality, diversity and inclusionOnline and blended tuition
• Project Aim: Enables more students to achieve their study goalsImproves and enhance the learning experience of students
• Status: Complete
• Date: October 2022 to August 2023

The scholarship project will pilot and evaluate ‘write now’ sessions on the Open University English Literature module A233 ‘Telling Stories: the novel and beyond’.  These will be live online sessions aimed at helping students get writing, alongside other students who form a writing community, in advance of an assignment deadline. The design for these sessions will draw upon theories and practices of academic writing retreats and community writing groups, to provide a supportive online space where students can make progress with their forthcoming assignment but writing their own independent work. These sessions will be distinct from (but complementary to) tuition which is already part of the module’s tuition strategy, providing a space to work/write rather than learning activities related to module content.

An established body of scholarship (e.g. Moore, 2003; Grant, 2006; Murray and Newton, 2009) has demonstrated the usefulness of structured writing retreats to support academic staff in their research writing, helping develop effective working strategies, increase motivation and enabling participants to ‘develop a sense of being part of a community of writers’ (Murray and Newton, 2009, p.241). Such an approach has been extended to support postgraduate research students at many institutions (see, e.g., Papen and Thériault, 2018) and the impact of the Covid pandemic has encouraged the development of online versions of writing retreats and writing groups while physical retreats were not possible (Koulaxi and Kong, 2022). This model of a supportive community of academic writers who meet regularly to make progress with their writing has not, to date, been adopted to any great extent for undergraduate students; however, the findings of Sangster (2021), working with undergraduate dissertation students, are that ‘writing retreats are a feasible intervention tool that facilitates attitudinal changes, such as enhanced motivation, increased confidence and a more positive outlook on the final writing process.’ This scholarship provides a set of developed approaches to writing retreats, and evidence of their effectiveness in helping foster positive approaches to academic writing, which our project seeks to build upon and adapt for the specific needs of OU undergraduate distance learning students.

The questions that we want to find the answers to from this project are:

1. Do students gain a sense of community from writing in the company of other students, in a virtual online setting and how does this impact on their experience of studying on the module?
2. Do students set themselves goals when they set aside a period of time for writing, and what kind of goals do they focus on?
3. Do students achieve those goals? If not, do they otherwise feel that they have made progress?
4. Do students feel that their time management skills improve, and that their study stays on track, through putting time aside to write with others in advance of the assignment deadline? Do students report that the sessions helped them meet assignment deadlines, keep going on the module and (ultimately) successfully complete the module?