Grant recipients: Clare Bermingham and Nadine Fladd, Writing and Communication Centre
Project team: Clare Bermingham, Nadine Fladd and Nicole Westlund Stewart, Writing and Communication Centre
In the photo you’ll see (Left to Right): Clare Bermingham – Director; Nadine Fladd – Writing and Multimodal Communication Specialist (graduate, postdoctoral and faculty support); Nicole Westlund Stewart – Writing and Multimodal Communication Specialist (STEM resource)
(Project timeline: September 2016 - August 2017)
Description
Dissertation Boot Camp (DBC) programs have been adopted at universities across North America over the last decade. Responding to Steve Simpson’s (2013) call for writing centres to do more than share anecdotal information about these programs, we assessed their benefits for doctoral students by analyzing three DBC types: an online program, a sustained weekly program, and an intensive retreat program. We aimed to determine each model’s effect on writing behaviors, confidence levels, and anxiety. Like Busl et al, (2015) we found that DBCs that help students reflect on their writing process are more beneficial than ones that only give students time and space to write. We found that students experience positive outcomes from different DBC models, and are likely to self-select the model that best suits their needs. These results indicate that post-secondary institutions should consider providing varied DBC programming to meet the needs of diverse graduate student populations.
Questions Investigated
The Writing and Communication Centre (WCC) embarked upon this project to contribute to educators’ understanding of how Dissertation Boot Camps might help support graduate student writers. Data collected from the Council of Graduate Schools' Ph.D. Completion Project suggests that "44% of Ph.D. candidates in the broad fields including engineering, social sciences, and humanities do not complete the dissertation by their tenth year" (Lee & Golde, 2013, p. 1). In response to these kinds of statistics, many universities across North America have begun to offer graduate students the opportunity to participate in writing camps, often referred to as dissertation boot camps (DBCs). Waterloo’s overall completion rate of 78% is higher than the U.S. rate of 56% noted above; however, information from faculty and students confirmed the need for targeted dissertation support, and WCC developed its first DBC program for fall 2015. The program had four objectives:
- Shorten program completion times and increase completion rates;
- Provide a space for students to focus and offer strategies for overcoming critical barriers;
- Foster a community of writers;
- Empower writers to sustain their momentum by engaging them with their writing process, writing strategies, and by connecting them with key resources.
Despite common employment of DBCs to help graduate students develop healthy, productive writing habits, as well as mitigate some of the isolation that graduate students often feel during the dissertation-writing stage, little research has been conducted to demonstrate the effect of DBC programming; in fact, "Writing centers often [only] exchange boot camp information informally" (Simpson, 2013, para. 34). Through our project, we hoped to empirically measure whether DBCs can help participants to experience decreased anxiety and increased confidence about writing their dissertation, increase the number of hours per week they spend writing, and use a wider range of writing strategies. By comparing the effects of three different DBC models, we hoped to determine which practices, one, reduce students' anxiety and increase their confidence, and, two, equip students with the sustainable, productive writing skills required to complete a thesis or dissertation in a timely manner.
Findings/Insights
Findings are currently submitted for publication and will be shared at a later time.
Dissemination and Impact
- At the provincial, national and/or international levels (e.g., presenting at conferences beyond uWaterloo; impact on discipline): We have submitted an article based on this study for publication in the Writing Center Journal. We also intend to propose a conference presentation about our findings for the Canadian Writing Centres Association conference in May of 2018, and the International Writing Centers Association in November of 2018.
Impact of the Project
Our findings have implications for DBC programming at the WCC and at other writing centres. Additional research about the quality of the time (rather than number of hours) DBC participants spend writing is still necessary, but our initial results suggest that DBC programs do work, and that writing centres need to offer graduate writing support programs in a variety of formats in order to best meet the needs of a diverse student population.
- Teaching: In 2018-2019, we will begin offering multiple models of DBC so that students have the opportunity to self-select into the model that best fits their needs.
- Connections with people from different departments, faculties, and/or disciplines about teaching and learning: Insights derived from this study will also inform how we talk to faculty in the Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor (ADDS) program about strategies for supporting graduate student writers.
References
Project Reference List (PDF)