Dive Brief:
- Faculty members have a place where everyone knows their name and their writing struggles. #acwri is a Twitter thread dedicated to tips, support and clean Internet humor dedicated to the bane of so many professors' existence, academic writing.
- The thread covers topics from avoiding burnout to getting published and offers resources and support for faculty members in a standalone website.
- To date, the @acwri account has nearly 10,000 followers and the topic has been featured in several educational and news media outlets.
Dive Insight:
Social media is becoming a key element for professors seeking to augment the outreach component of their tenure applications and for those seeking celebrity within the higher education industry. And having a place for faculty members from varying campuses and disciplines to meet, collaborate and commiserate may be a much-needed asset for the profession's culture and an unintentional marketing tool.
Faculty members that have a space to brainstorm and share their research, books and other forms of scholastic publishing can benefit students, departments and campuses at large. Twitter chats and threads are the kinds of niche group, public square approaches that may help to birth conferences, symposiums and other forms of collaborations that could lead to innovation and save money on innovation development.
Many schools encourage intra-department and school collaboration in maker space projects and faculty collaboration, but participating in the Twitter town square form of dialog is a vibrant tool for schools to use in encouraging professors to participate, and to help brand their scholastic headquarters along the way.