Let’s Get You Started on Your Blog Journey (412)

21 October 2024

Dr Pauline Fritsch

Academic and scientific blogs are becoming more and more popular. Dr. Inger Mewburn's blog The Thesis Whisperer reaches over 80k subscribers, and even journals like Nature now offer scientists to share their stories as guest posts.

But, as PhD candidates, why undertaking this path?

Blogging is a unique communication experience through which you can acquire various and valuable transferable skills to carry with you, no matter where your career brings you!

Blogging is a way to:

• Develop your own communication style, beyond academic writing.
• Develop your critical thinking by writing on subject you care about.
• Make yourself visible online, develop your network.
• Acquire valuable technical skills for website and social media management.

How to get started? Let's do it together!

This interactive workshop will give you an overview of how to create a blog for yourself and to learn about the overall blogger experience.

The day will be structured as follows:

• We will start by exploring a few example websites and reflect together on do's and don'ts.
• Then, to help you clarify your own project, we will address the questions of "Why, How, Who, When and What" behind blogging.
• In a third part, we will focus on best practices for blog writing, with time for you to work further on your "About" page.
• Next, we will discuss social media and blogging platforms like WordPress*.
• Finally, we will illustrate what was learned through the day by applying it to 2 example blog projects.

Blogging about your PhD research is a great way to take a step back and take a different, less formal, approach to it. You might get new ideas and could use it to get in contact with other researchers in your field.
However, you are welcome to join this workshop no matter on which subject you would like to blog about, including non-scientific topics!

 Learning outcomes:

At the end of this workshop, you will:

• Have clarified your blog project scope.
• Have identified your purpose and audience.
• Know about good practices for blog writing.
• Know about technical tools available.
  

All participants should come with their personal laptop.
 
Preparatory work:

Please note that a two-hours preparatory work is required. You should have:

• A name for your blog,
• An idea of the subject(s) you want to address,
• A first draft of your "about me" page.

CUSO will provide you with further details four weeks before the workshop.

 *Please note that compared to the previous version of this workshop, there won't be any technical part of setting up your website, only advice and useful links will be provided.

University of Neuchâtel

Date: Monday, 21st October 2024

Schedule: from 9:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.

Place: University of Neuchâtel

Trainer:

Dr Pauline Fritsch graduated with a PhD in biology from the University of Fribourg during which she got actively involved in CUSO's transferable skills program, in particular to develop her communication skills. After graduation and while travelling for 18 months in Asia, she launched her professional blog academiac.net in 2018. Before this, Pauline had already been using WordPress since 2012 for private blogs. On academiac.net, she is writing for the PhD candidates community on subjects like soft skills and career development. She has been exploring different writing styles, from reflective pieces to resources and scientific article summary. Using her blog for networking, she set foot in the community of professional in doctoral education in Switzerland. After coordinating doctoral programs in biology at the University of Neuchâtel for two years, she joined the team of the Graduate Campus at the University of Lausanne in February 2022.

Participants are eligible for reimbursement of incurred travel expenses by train between the city of their university and the location of the workshop (half-fare card, 2nd class).

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