I’m a huge fan of peer review in the classroom: it gives students opportunities to interact with and be inspired by each other while building their critical review skills. Not to mention peer review on initial drafts reserves my time for more meaningful one-on-one interactions on more complete work. In contrast, student writing in my lab is usually a solo project where students work with only me. The process is effective (as in we get a satisfying finished project), but I feel a void in peer interaction. With three (three!) thesis students this semester (2 undergrad and 1 MS student), I decided it was a great time to create tools for whole lab writing instructions and review: the First Annual SuperFly Writing Retreat.

I was inspired by a recent writing retreat with Cathy Mazak designed to organize our 2021 writing plans (ridiculously helpful!). I decided to make our retreat partially about organization and partly about writing skills that would be beneficial to my thesis students at this stage of their writing. 

The retreat was an interactive Zoom meeting where students could do exercises and then share with each other. It lasted just about 3 hours in total with a break about half way through. For a first effort, I think the retreat was a success! The students all said that the retreat was helpful and asked to check-in at lab meeting in a month to report on their organization and writing efforts. Stay tuned! 

Lab Writing Retreat Agenda

Intro: what is writing? 

Discussion of the various parts of writing from planning experiments to writing your final thesis. 

Planning and Focusing in Spring Semester

Mindset exercise: Students responded and shared on the following prompts: What do you want to accomplish this semester? How will you accomplish these goals? What support do you need to accomplish these goals? What do you need to believe to make your goals a reality? 

Planning: We used blank monthly calendars to map all important deadlines for the semester (e.g. exams and large class projects, abstract/presentation deadlines, intermediate thesis steps). We then created “to Dr. B” deadlines to make sure I was getting all materials well in advance of their due date so there is enough time for feedback. The students identified “free” times in their schedules where they can work on their most important projects. Lastly, we scheduled fun/rest time to try to stave off burnout.

Focusing: Discussed tricks for staying on task: planning small goals daily, “pomodoro” timers, airplane mode (i.e. get ready to not get out of your seat for an hour), and accountability with a friend.

Peer review

Students worked in pairs (chosen by me based on their level/project) to review a small bit of each other’s work. I felt like this was most helpful in figure design by pairing my more experienced students with my newer students.

Crafting a discussion section

Discussions are the most fun and most difficult part of thesis writing where many of my students get a little lost. We worked on creating mindmaps of central ideas related to their data and using the maps to spin off more questions to drive a literature search. The students shared their mindmaps with the group so they could get some feedback.