Increasing number of joint international research and educational projects require involvement of young researchers with similar level of academic writing skills. Academic writing skills are essential in PhD students’ training in the Western countries. However, doctorate students from Russian institutions at the “Energy in the New Time” Thematic Network (ENT TN) had certain difficulties in mastering academic writing skills in comparison with students who have their graduate education in the Western education system. Academic writing is not a central part of Russian regular students’ education and training activities. Despite years of harmonization in the system of education according to Bologna Declaration and Lisbon Convention, academic traditions are still very much different between institutions, in particular in the field of social sciences. This can also represent a potential challenge for long-term collaboration in the future Arctic researcher projects. Therefore, harmonized academic writing course within the ENT TN seems relevant in order to train well qualified future researchers in the Arctic region.
The intention of partners in the ENT TN is to design and implement a new joint PhD course “Introduction to Academic Writing”. This PhD course will be online course of 2,5 ECTS. The main idea of this component is to create starting platform for PhD students in the ENT TN in understanding of importance of academic writing as a part of PhD education. Through online video-lectures PhD students will learn about formal requirements connected with international publications, general considerations regarding empirical work, methodology and Western traditions of research including ethics in academic writing. Russian PhD and master students will learn basics of scientific traditions related to publications in top academic journals, logic structure of a scientific paper.
For the current moment together with our partners from ENT TN we are working with the course design and searching for ITC-solutions for the first component. We plan to test the 1st component in August 2016 and launch the 2nd component in September 2016.
The developed joint PhD Course will improve abilities of PhD students from Russian ENT TN member intuitions of the Universities of the Arctic to publish in Western academic journals and contribute to increasing number of joint international publications by researchers coming from different research traditions.
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This article was published in the 4th issue of "UArctic Russian Newsletter"