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Walden University Writing Center

Where instructors and editors talk writing.

October Live Webinars

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Next week, we're excited to host two live student webinars. "Welcome to the Writing Center" is a great webinar for you if you're new to Walden, haven't used the Writing Center much yet, or would like some guidance on what resources are most helpful depending on the time you have and your learning style. 

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October is a special month for the Walden community, as students, faculty, and staff come together with each other and in their communities to celebrate Global Days of Service. This year marks Walden's 15th Global Days of Service, a dedicated time to volunteer and enact positive social change through service. 



To join in the celebration, our second webinar this month, "Using Restorative Writing to Enact Social Change," is a specialized discussion about using writing to transform pain into engagement and even potentially social change. In this interactive session, learn what restorative writing is, why it matters, and how to use it for healing, self-care, and building stronger communities.

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If you can't attend the webinars live, visit our webinar recordings archive to access recordings and transcripts for all of our webinars. Better yet, register for the webinars below to receive the recording links by email as soon as they're available!

Welcome to the Writing Center
October 20, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET  
Register

This webinar will orient you to the many resources available at your fingertips, including paper reviews, extensive website and videos, Quick Answerslive and recorded webinarsself-paced modules, and social media. We'll specifically focus on which resources will be most helpful when you're short on time, have a few days to get help, or are looking to develop your writing skills long-term. 

Using Restorative Writing to Enact Social Change
October 22, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
Register

Writing can be a useful tool for processing difficult events and discovering connections between your experiences and local, community, or global problems. In this webinar, you will explore how you can use restorative writing to promote wellness for yourself and your community. Information about the concept of restorative writing and how it evolved in academia will serve as the foundation for our discussion before you practice restorative writing during this webinar. Finally, you will reflect on how restorative writing can help you enact social change. 



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The Walden University Writing Center offers live webinars each month on academic writing topics such as scholarly writing, APA style, and practical writing skills.

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Where Do You Find Your Writing Motivation?

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Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing Spotlight

Finding motivation to write has always been somewhat allusive for me. While I’m generally a pretty productive person, when it comes to writing, I often find myself procrastinating and waiting until conditions are just right to sit down and put words on the page.  
Getting those conditions “just right” often means that I need to start writing well ahead of my deadlineFor me, if I start writing without a deadline breathing down my neck, I can often trick my mind into thinking I’m working ahead of schedule, something my type-A personality really appreciates. This practice feeds my motivation, and I often find that writing comes easier to me when I’m writing working ahead.  

The other component of writing motivation for me is finding the right environment to write in. As a staff member in the Writing Center, I work from home and on my computer five days a week, so I find that I can easily be distracted if I try to write in my home office. Instead, I try to go somewhere else to do my writing: Right now, I’m writing from a quiet coffee shop down the street. There’s something about the ambient noises in a coffee shop that let me focus on my writing. No one particularly minds if I stare out the window as I think, and I feel a sense of kinship with the other people here working on their own writing.  
Recently, the Writing Center asked faculty contributors to our Faculty Voices: Walden Talks Writing project about where they find their writing motivation. Everyone has their own quirks about how or when they write best, and learning from others can help you learn what works for you 
Watch the video to hear what our faculty contributors had to say, then think about your own writing motivation:  

Where do you find your writing motivation, and how can you cultivate that writing motivation to help you be a productive writer? 



Beth Nastachowski 
Associate Director, Office of Writing Instruction.Beth Nastachowski has been with the Writing Center for 10 years and lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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Writing About COVID-19

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COVID-19 is inescapable for us all in the year 2020 as a pandemic that has resulted in widespread economic, social, and political consequences. As a Walden student committed to research for social change, you may find yourself interested in researching and writing on topics related to the pandemic. Here are some definitions and tips on writing about COVID-19 to provide you some initial guidance.

The World Health Organization (WHO) as an international public health leader named the disease and the virus that causes it in February 2020:

  • The disease is named coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
  • The virus that causes COVID-19 is named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The term “COVID-19” refers to the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. However, it also has wider application. The term is also used to refer to the pandemic resulting from widespread infections of that virus, as well as to the consequences of lockdowns and policies meant to limit the spread of COVID-19. For greater specificity, use “COVID-19” as a modifier for the specific aspect of medical, social, political, or economic consequences being addressed, as follows:

  • Executive orders that prohibited public gatherings caused COVID-19 closures, resulting in the closing of local libraries. People who contract SARS-CoV-2 can have a range of COVID-19 symptoms, from little to no symptoms (asymptomatic) to severe respiratory issues.
  • Following APA style guidance, look to a standard collegiate dictionary such as Merriam-Webster for spelling, which uses “COVID-19.” Note that you will see many variations on spelling and capitalization of the term in different publications, especially since the term is so new.

Although COVID-19 is an abbreviation for “coronavirus disease,” because it is listed as a term in the dictionary, it does not need to be introduced via abbreviations in your writing (see Section 6.25 in APA 7).

Other names for COVID-19 circulate fairly widely in political discussions, but many of these terms are explicitly racist and xenophobic and thus should not be used in research writing except as quotations or in discussions of the problematic nature of such terms. These names include terms such as “Wuhan virus” or “China virus” that name the location where the virus was first identified in an attempt to lay blame for the pandemic on a people, country, or government. For more information, consult the guidance issued by the United Nations (UN) on combatting COVID-19 hate speech.

For some examples of how psychology, health care, and public researchers and journalists discuss COVID-19, see the American Psychological Association’s page on APA COVID-19 Information and Resources.

As you consider different aspects of COVID-19 for research, keep in mind that as the pandemic is currently active, there is a lot of ambiguity about terminology along with heated political debate about the meanings of specific terms. Here are some examples of terms in wide circulation today that should you should carefully chose and define in your writing:

  • social distancing
  • quarantine, lockdown, stay at home orders, mask orders
  • personal protective equipment (PPE)
  • face masks, face coverings, cloth masks, respirators, N95 masks, surgical masks

 
As always, please email or chat with Writing Center staff if you have additional questions about how to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic accurately, clearly, and objectively in your writing.

 



Paul Lai, Manager, Website and Information Resources

Paul Lai manages the Writing Center's website. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his partner and their two dogs.





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September Live Webinars

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And just like that...it's September! We've got a number of live webinars in the works and we hope to see you there! Can't make it to a live webinar? Check out our archive of recorded webinars on a wide array of different writing-related topics.


Writing at the Graduate Level
Wednesday September 9th from 12:00-1:00 p.m. ET
Audience: Graduate Students

We are not born knowing how to write academically, and you did not enter graduate school knowing how to write like a graduate student. After all, writing is a learning process. This session will discuss the characteristics of scholarly writing, giving you strategies to elevate your writing to graduate school expectations.

Writing and Responding to Discussion Posts
Tuesday September 22nd from 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET
Audience: All Students

As a Walden student, you'll write many discussion posts in your courses. Attend this webinar to learn the Writing Center's tips on how to create strong discussion posts and how to respond to your classmates' discussion posts.

The Walden University Writing Center creates content to help students with a range of topics related to scholarly writing, APA style, and the writing process. We host webinars, and offer paper reviews, live chat, and a podcast.


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August Live Webinar Schedule

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Can you believe it’s August already? During this classic back-to-school season, check out our live webinar calendar. Hope to see you there!


Transitioning from Corsework to Doctoral Capstone Writing
Tuesday, August 4, 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET
Audience: Doctoral Capstone students

Writing a doctoral capstone document, such as a dissertation or a doctoral or project study, is a unique process with its own challenges. Often the shorter writing and research assignments you have done in courses do not accurately reflect what it takes to craft a book-length document that contains an original scholarly contribution, which is what your capstone will be. This webinar addresses the ways writing the doctoral capstone differs from writing for graduate courses and outlines some helpful strategies for how to approach the writing process as you move into the capstone phase.

Essential Elements for Writing Annotated Bibliographies

Thursday, August 13, 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET
Audience: Graduate students 

This session discusses the do's and don'ts of annotated bibliographies using examples. This session is relevant for any graduate students who will be or have completed an annotated bibliography as part of their course work or in preparation for a doctoral capstone study. We also explain how annotated bibliographies can be used by all writers as a way to take notes and organize research. If you are currently writing or will write a large research paper, this is the webinar for you!

Writing Literature Reviews in Your Graduate Coursework
Tuesday, August 18, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET
Audience: Graduate students 

Are you writing a literature review in one of your master's or doctoral courses? This webinar is for you! Literature reviews often require a large amount of research and organization as you collect multiple perspectives on a topic and synthesize them together. In this webinar, you'll learn tips for how to successfully write a literature review for your courses.

Note: This webinar will not address literature reviews in doctoral capstones (dissertations and project studies). To learn about literature reviews in doctoral capstones, see the webinar "Reviewing the Literature and Incorporating Previous Research," as well as the Doctoral Capstone Form and Style website.

If you are unable to attend any of these sessions in person, we post recordings of every live webinar event on the Walden University Writing Center website. The recordings of these sessions are posted 24 hours after they take place, and you can watch them free and on-demand. 

The Walden University Writing Center creates content to help students with a range of topics related to scholarly writing, APA style, and the writing process. We host webinars, and offer paper reviews, live chat, and a podcast.


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