Free online course with texts, exercises and videos to help you write professional and scientific papers.
Free online course with texts, exercises and videos to help you write professional and scientific papers.
Academic Writing Online is a partnership project of the Baltazar Zaprešić Polytechnic and six other higher education institutions from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, whose goal is to make it easier for students to overcome obstacles in the field of academic writing.
Experts from seven European higher education institutions developed the AWO project online a course with texts, exercises and videos for teaching the writing of professional and scientific papers in the official languages of the member countries of the project.
It is a series of recorded lectures, texts and presentations with instructions for the preparation of the final thesis and/or the preparation of a scientific or professional paper.
The modules provide students with appropriate academic writing skills, and an additional module serves to train teachers in the role of mentors so that they can help and support students in writing their papers.
"Students can sign up for free on the project page and choose topics related to writing the paper themselves," explains Ksenija Stojaković, a senior lecturer in German at the Baltazar Zaprešić Polytechnic and the project leader, adding that the project is excellent for self-study and acquiring new knowledge. He also points out that it is adapted to all electronic devices - tablets, mobile phones, desktop computers and others.
"The results of the project enable students to have a virtual mentor because it is a well-known fact that lecturers at faculties do not have enough working time for mentoring," says senior lecturer Stojaković.
The goal of the project is in line with one of the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy – increasing the number of graduate undergraduate students. In that strategy, it is stated that by 2020, 40% of graduates between the ages of 30 and 34 should successfully complete their undergraduate studies, to which this project contributes greatly. Teacher Stojaković points out that she would like as many students and teachers as possible to use the materials of this project because "just raising web-platforme je velik korak, ali korištenje je krajnji cilj”.
The original course template was developed in German and English, after which the project partners translated it into the languages of the countries participating in the project. A big advantage of this project is that the modules are identical in all seven languages, so they are suitable for students participating in student exchange programs.
The next step could be the creation of teaching materials for the three key topics of the project, namely theoretical and practical instructions on writing the final and/or diploma thesis, followed by IT tools and communication skills, which are also needed in the process of creating the thesis. These teaching materials could be used to conduct shorter workshops for students, but also as a supplement to any mentor teacher.
