Centre for Academic Writing and Communication

The main goal of the Centre for Academic Writing and Communication (AVOK) is to support writing and communication skills development through the following activities.

Research

We want our support to be informed through research. As such, AVOK actively seeks research projects, topics, and partners that approach writing through different angles. For example, our research investigates writing processes through peer review, and writing products through different genres, disciplines, and languages. We focus on questions such as: How can we best support students' positive experiences while giving and receiving feedback on their writing? How do students write and communicate in the Humanities in comparison to Chemistry? What do texts look like when students write a MA thesis in Education? How do we write in Estonian?

We will support students who seek to engage in a thesis topic related to questions about writing and communication. For example, we have had students investigate creative writing in secondary schools and students' attitudes towards writing (examples to be added shortly). Another investigation focused on the stance of students in their writing in the Department of English MA theses.

Teaching and Learning

Our courses are informed by our research and currently the following courses are developed around our central principle to support writing and communication skills development:

We also support the following:

We have a number of resources available for students:

If you would like to join our team, please write an email to djuddah.leijen@ut.ee.

Projects and networks we are a part of

Writing process management with digital tools

Virtual exhange course

You are currently a student, and you want to strengthen your digital and intercultural competencies? Join this virtual exchange course and learn writing strategies for managing the complex process of academic writing. Here you will try out various Al-based tools that can facilitate writing but also require critical thinking and reflexion. You will also exchange ideas with participants from the university of Göttingen (Germany) and Gent (Belgium) about the writing processes and requirements for academic products.

In this course you can:

  1. Engage in an intercultural learning experience and strengthen your intercultural skills.
  2. Learn writing strategies to cope with the complex working process of academic writing.
  3. Try out different digital AI-based tools that can facilitate writing and also require critical reflection.
  4. Exchange ideas with international peers about their writing processes and requirements on writing products.

Course duration:

  • September 26 - October 12 (Application deadline: September 20)
  • November 23 - December 5 (Application deadline: November 22)

How to apply? Send a motivation letter with a short description of yourself and your motivation for joining this project ju Dr Djuddah Leijen (djuddah.leijen@ut.ee).

BWRITE contributes to understanding local writing conventions and helps to preserve Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian writing traditions in all the domains, including research and higher education. The results can be used when teaching academic writing in Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. In addition, the results will contribute to studies of academic identity aspects and add to the intercultural rhetoric research worldwide.

In this intercultural virtual exchange project with 25 students from three different universities and study programmes, you can strengthen your academic writing skills and your intercultural competence by working collaboratively on one of the ENLIGHT challenges (EHealth challenges and opportunities, the role of Artificial Intelligence in shaping sustainable cities and communities, impact of climate change on regional ecosystems, energy and circular economy, inequalities, socio-spatial polarization, and diversity).

The project is a collaboration between Göttingen University, Ghent University, and the University of Tartu.

See the courses:

We support the development and integration of writing into different disciplines. To enrich the development of each partners' writing initiatives, our objectives are to emphasize sharing the rationales of the on-going writing initiatives and pedagogical interventions. By doing so, we tap into each other's strengths and aim to develop writing initiatives that are best suited for each of our unique Nordic and Baltic contexts

NB!Write benefits researchers, instructors, students, departments and institutes who use writing as a measure of academic achievement and who see writing instruction as a scaffold for student success.