May 2012 The Written Word Focus of Tenth Galway Symposium on Higher Education

The tenth Galway Symposium on Higher Education will take place at NUI Galway from 7-8 June in Áras Moyola. The two day symposium, entitled The Written Word: Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education, will be comprised of papers, short presentations, workshops, panel discussions and posters.

Essays, reports, papers, books, journals, and even blogs are all at the heart of higher education, and the ability to write clearly and intelligently is deemed a hallmark of a successful graduate. For those working in academia, the need to publish journal papers, monographs and other emerging media forms is vital, with performance metrics based on output and citations.

To navigate the complex world of the ‘information age’, powers of discrimination and judgement are essential to the enterprise of sense-making. Academics increasingly need to be able to communicate with a wider audience, to reach out and share their passion and expertise with the public and engage with debate and critique in educational, scientific, cultural and political spheres.

The focus of the symposium will be on nurturing the skills of writing amongst students and fine-tuning our own approaches and adapt to new media and new audiences. Questions such as what can we do to challenge the increasing costs of publication, journal subscription charges and the ‘paywalls’ that block access to knowledge, and how can we weave together the skills of communication, critical thinking and public engagement, will also be discussed.  

Keynote speakers will include: Professor Adrian Frazier, NUI Galway; Dr Brian Hughes,Senior Lecturer in Psychology, NUI Galway; Catherine Cronin, Academic Coordinator on eLearning programmes at NUI Galway, and advocate of social and digital media for learning; Dr Adam Rutherford, writer and broadcaster; William St. Clair, Senior Research Fellow, Universities of London, Cambridge and Harvard, and Chairman of Open Book Publishers; Dr Mary R. Lea, Reader at the Institute  of Educational Technology and researcher on academic literacies, Open University; andDr Aileen Fyfe, University of St. Andrews and author of Steam-Powered Knowledge.

Dr Iain Mac Labhrainn, Director of CELT said: “It is vital that graduates have high levels of writing skills, and the ability to share, critique and communicate knowledge and ideas to a wide range of potential audiences is at the heart of higher education.”

Registration for the event is available at http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/conference/conference12.html

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