Faculty Spotlight on Dr. Darci J. Harland

This month on the blog, we're highlighting various members of the Walden community. This post is our last in this month's spotlight series; if you missed them, be sure to check out our WriteCast episode featuring student questions, our staff and alumna interviews, and our services spotlight.

This week, we’re featuring Dr. Darci J. Harland, contributing faculty in the Learning, Instruction, and Innovation (LII) Ph.D. program in the Richard W. Reilly College of Education and Leadership, and writer of one of our favorite blogs for dissertation writers. An Illinois native, Dr. Harland teaches advanced LII courses, mentors dissertation writers, and writes courses in the Educational Technology PhD program.

What are the most common writing challenges for your students? 

Early in the program I find that students try to write like someone else. It’s as if they believe that because they are in a PhD program, their writing should have lots of big words and sound “hoity-toity.” They are often relieved when I tell them to stop using the thesaurus, and remind them that while the ideas they communicate need to be complex, their language does not. With dissertation students, the literature review seems to be the biggest challenge. There’s so much reading and organizing that has to happen before the writing begins. That frustrates students when they think that the dissertation is all about writing, and in actuality, it’s about organizing ideas for writing.   

What have you done to help your students master those skills?

I’ve started a blog to address common issues my mentees have with the dissertation process. I started No ABD for me to help me organize my ideas around certain issues common among my students. When working with future students, I can refer them there and be assured that they are each receiving consistent advice.

I also use the dissertation forum discussions to get students to talk about the process of writing; once they discover how others brainstorm, organize their ideas, take notes on their reading, and schedule writing time, it not only helps frame their own practices, but provides camaraderie within my mentee group. In these forums, I’ve posted prompts on anthropomorphism--asking them to review Writing Center information on the topic and explore how their own writing is affected by it--and the WU Writing Center blog, asking them to find a post, share it, and describe why it helps them at this phase of their journey.

For the literature review, I've developed note-taking tips that focus students on the questions they need to answer in order to have a complete review of their topic. We often brainstorm these together. I provide a sample matrix and note taking sheets I use for writing, organized by these sub-questions. If established properly, it helps students identify when an article informs the topic and when it doesn’t. This technique helps students take notes efficiently and by topic, rather than by article, since one article will most likely help answer more than one sub-question. Taking this approach helps when it comes time to write because the paraphrased ideas and quotes are already organized by sub-questions, which easily become the paper’s subheadings. I certainly do not force my students to use my note-taking method, but I do require that they watch a video I made about how to use the system, as it will better inform their own methods and give them a bigger picture of what needs to be accomplished in the literature review stage.

How does your own experience as a writer inform your work with student writers?

I thrive on feedback. Anytime I write, I give the piece to a colleague and ask him or her to be ruthless. I love getting another perspective, finding ways to make my ideas more clear and improving my writing by rewriting. I try to instill this same mentality with my PhD students. I want them to see writing as a PROCESS and that the time and energy I pour into their feedback is done in love and in an effort to help them improve.

What advice do you have for students who want to improve their writing?

Find a writing buddy. Find someone with whom you can schedule writing times for accountability and then exchange papers for editing. Writing can be lonely. When everyone else you know is outside enjoying life and you’re at a computer typing away, worried about comma splices, you’ll be less likely to be resentful if you know someone else is writing too!

What advice do you have for faculty who want to help their student writers?

Before writing lengthy feedback about writing, quickly scour the Walden Writing Center website and blog. Most of the student issues I see are covered somewhere on their website. Refer students to a specific URL and then hold them accountable in the next paper to address that specific writing issue.

How is a student’s ability to write related to success in your field?

LII isn’t one field; I have nursing students, military service members, kindergarten teachers, college deans, industry educators, and high school principals. As in any field in academia, if you can’t clearly communicate your ideas, you won’t be able to contribute to the field.

What’s something about you that would surprise your students?

I have a “big” online personality, so students are often surprised that I’m only five feet tall.

As the Writing Center's manager of program outreach and faculty support, Amber Cook's main focus is supporting faculty in their work with student writers.


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