Guest Post: An Online AuthorAID Course Given in Spanish

[This post is by AuthorAID team member Alex Arreola (shown in the photo). Thank you, Alex! —Barbara]

Recently I translated AuthorAID’s online research writing course into Spanish. I then facilitated a pilot offering of it at the university in Mexico where I teach. The pilot was for graduate students and professors at the College of Biological Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Léon.

Like the English version, which AuthorAID has given several times, this 5-week course was run entirely online through the INASP Moodle. The course discusses the writing process and provides guidance on writing the sections of a research paper. It also includes activities and a discussion forum.

The course was a success! About half of the 58 people who completed the course were graduate students writing their first research paper. I received many positive comments, and some participants said the online format made taking the course much easier.

Because I facilitated the course at the school where I teach, the course was also a little experiment in embedding AuthorAID instruction at an institution. One advantage of embedding the course is that participants can communicate more easily with the facilitator if there are questions or technical issues; for instance, several colleagues went to my office or called me when they had problems with the platform or the activities.

Another advantage of embedding a course locally, and one that I found most satisfying, is learning more about what your colleagues are working on. Although my school is relatively small, knowing what everyone else is working on is difficult. During the course, people from different laboratories or departments who work on similar subjects started talking, and some even started collaborating!

The pilot of the Spanish-language research writing course was a very positive experience for me and for my colleagues. I hope to run this course again soon.

To learn more about AuthorAID's embedding work, please contact Julie Walker at jwalker@inasp.info.