Developing and implementing a virtual writing workshop for doctoral students in a Global Leadership PhD program

Abstract

Writing support is one facet of doctoral education with implications on student retention, persistence, and completion. Previous research suggests focus has been given to undergraduate writing, while little attention has been paid to support graduate writing overall and even less at the doctoral level (Rose & McClafferty, 2001). After observing student struggles with doctoral-level academic writing, members of the faculty determined a need to better support writing development from coursework through the final dissertation in an online Global Leadership PhD program. In this article, we describe the development and implementation of a multi-day, interactive, and synchronous online writing workshop collaboratively offered by faculty and staff to address challenges experienced by pre-dissertation students, as well as those in the dissertation stage of the program. Students had demonstrated a wide variety of challenges, including trouble writing using conventional standards, difficulty organizing their thoughts, understanding and applying appropriate APA formatting, and minor proofreading errors in their writing. These challenges are often exacerbated by differences in priorities from instructors, creating confusion for the student on how to best address these challenges and become more proficient in their writing. Following a description of the practice, we include a discussion on student evaluations of the workshop and make recommendations for the application of similar support initiatives.