GWF's writing clinics @GRIC: Home

Overleaf Workshop (September 28, 2023)

By the end of this workshop, you will be equipped with the essential skills needed to create polished resumes, engaging presentations, well-structured research articles, and properly formated theses and dissertations, complying with OGS requirements.

Captivating Your Audience: The Power of Visual Design in Presentations (April 13, 2023)

This GWF clinic was designed to help participants improve their presentation design skills and create more engaging and effective presentations. Participants learned about the key principles of visual design, including color theory, typography, layout, and use of images and multimedia. They learned how to use design elements to create a cohesive and compelling narrative, and how to avoid common design pitfalls that can detract from the impact of their presentations. Participants also learned how to use design tools and software to create professional-quality presentations. By the end of the clinic, participants had a clear understanding of how to use visual design principles to create engaging and effective presentations that communicate their ideas and research effectively to diverse audiences, along with the skills and confidence needed to create visually compelling presentations that leave a lasting impact on their audience.

This clinic was held in Spanish with slides in English.

Designing Effective Poster Presentations Strategies for Engaging Audiences & Communicating Research (March 23, 2023)

Posters are a popular format for presenting research at academic conferences, and they require a unique approach to design and communication. In this workshop, participants will learn about the key elements of effective poster design, including layout, color, typography, and visual hierarchy. They will also learn strategies for creating engaging and informative content that effectively communicates their research to a diverse audience. The workshop will include hands-on activities and peer review sessions to give participants practical experience in designing and presenting their own posters. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the skills and confidence needed to create visually compelling and informative poster presentations that effectively communicate their research to a wide audience.

Tableau: Intuitive, Visual Analytics for Academia (November 22, 2022)

Are you wondering how to make your research data more interesting, dynamic, and relevant? Go beyond Excel and bring your data to life! If done well, data visualizations in Tableau tell an interesting story. They can also shine a light on hidden information that you wouldn’t uncover in a spreadsheet or bar chart. This clinic discusses visualization basics in Tableau through simple examples. You will also learn where to find additional resources to make your research data come alive.

To request a free, one-year Tableau student license, use this link: tableau.com/academic/students Install the software on your personal computer and then practice by viewing the clinic and following along.

Top 10 Tools for Better Academic Writing (November 3, 2022)

Are you drafting a journal article but are stuck thinking about aspects such as tone, style, transitions, and word choice? Are you wondering how these aspects influence the peer-review process? This clinic presents the top 10 tools the Graduate Writing Facilitators (GWFs) use every day to help students like you improve their academic writing skills.

To access a list of the resources mentioned in the video, visit https://libguides.uprm.edu/gricen/gwf and click on "Key Academic Writing Resources".

Literature Review: Objectives and Guidelines (October 27, 2022)

Your graduate school success depends partly on your ability to critically read, summarize, and review relevant literature in your field. In this clinic, you will learn how to search for, compile, and organize your sources in order to tell your own research story in a coherent, engaging, and appealing way. The session is formatted as an interactive workshop to give you the opportunity to practice these skills in a safe, collegial environment.

Complementary Documents

Preparing for your Thesis Defense: From Manuscript to Presentation (April 18, 2022)

La meta de su carrera académica es presentar y defender su tesis ante su comité graduado. Este taller guiará a los participantes a través del proceso de defensa de tesis, les proporcionará herramientas e ideas para estructurar sus presentaciones y les aconsejará obre hábitos efectivos de presentación verbal y no verbal útiles para la defensa y el futuro.

Writing a Journal Article Critique (April 12, 2022)

Writing effective journal article critiques is a useful skill in graduate school and may even be a requirement for obtaining your degree. This workshop will provide an overview on how to critically read a piece of research, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and assess the effectiveness of the author's arguments.

Writing for STEM (March 24, 2022)

Research articles and proposals are how scientists communicate research findings and obtain funding. This clinic will introduce basic concepts of scientific writing with the aim of highlighting the importance of effective communication. Participants will learn about draft creation; additionally, we will discuss pointers on how to write clearly and coherently.

Overleaf versus MS Word Templates 101 (March 14, 2022)

Una de las metas de su carrera académica es presentar y defender su tesis ante su comité graduado. En este taller, discutiremos la estructura de tesis y disertaciones. Cubriremos temas como el formato de la portada, las secciones principales y los encabezados. Además, discutiremos errores comunes de formato. Se presentarán dos plantillas, una en formato MS Word y otra en Overleaf (LaTeX), para facilitar la creación de su documento.

Find Them, File Them, Flaunt Them: Mendeley Tips for Reference Management (March 9, 2022)

Your credibility as a scholar depends on your ability to employ relevant, recent, and reliable sources. Finding and reading them is the easy part; the challenge is having them handy when you need them and citing them appropriately in your writing. This workshop will discuss how to use Mendeley software to create in-text citations and bibliographies. Participants will follow a step-by-step guide beginning with program and plugin installation, followed by strategies to digitally organize your sources and ending with tips on using Mendeley in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Latex.

Making Your Abstracts Pop (February 10, 2022)

Make your work stand out! In this clinic, we will share tips on how to write abstracts that grab your readers' attention with thoughtful, concise, and well-composed lines of text. We will also talk about the essential information you must include to convey an accurate idea of the elements of your study and your findings.

Find Them, File Them, Flaunt Them: Mendeley Tips for Reference Management (November 4, 2021)

Your credibility as a scholar depends on your ability to employ relevant, recent, and reliable sources. Finding and reading them is the easy part; the challenge is having them handy when you need them and citing them appropriately in your writing. This workshop discusses how to use Mendeley software to create in-text citations and bibliographies. It starts by explaining program and plugin installation, followed by strategies to digitally organize your sources and ending with tips on using Mendeley in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Latex.

Visual Design when Presenting Research

Visual aids can be powerful tools to enhance your impact and appeal when presenting your research. Words and images presented in different formats can make your scholarly products stand out and capture your audience’s imagination, while also adding clarity and emphasizing crucial points. In turn, cluttered visual design can be extremely detrimental, as it detracts from the focus of your message and prevents effective communication of your findings. In this GWF clinic, we discuss how to incorporate visual aids effectively in oral presentations, posters, articles, and other research outputs.

Overleaf vs MS Word: Templates 101 (October 7, 2021)

En este taller se presentan dos plantillas para la creación de tesis y disertaciones, una en MS Word y otra en Overleaf (LaTeX). Estas herramientas sirven para facilitar la creación de tu escrito, ayudándote a cumplir con todos los requisitos de formato. Se cubren también temas como la estructura general de las tesis, el formato de la portada, las secciones principales y los encabezados.

Making Your Abstracts Pop

Abstracts are required for most projects graduate students will undertake during their academic and professional careers. In this clinic you will learn about the different types of abstracts that are commonly used in academia, the ones that are most pertinent to your discipline or field of studies and the steps that you should follow to produce a polished, professional and publishable informative abstract. The clinic is formatted as an interactive workshop to give you the opportunity to practice your skills in a safe, collegial environment.

Find Them, File Them, Flaunt Them: Mendeley Tips for Reference Management (March 24, 2021)

Your credibility as a scholar depends on your ability to employ relevant, recent, and reliable sources. Finding and reading them is the easy part; the challenge is having them handy when you need them and citing them appropriately in your writing. This workshop will discuss how to use Mendeley software to create in-text citations and bibliographies. Participants will follow a step-by-step guide beginning with program and plugin installation, followed by strategies to digitally organize your sources and ending with tips on using Mendeley in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Latex.

Mastering Poster Presentations

Poster presentations are an engaging and visually appealing method of scholarly communication. They help you promote your research, generate interest, and network with peers in your field. In this clinic, you will learn about the poster designs appropriate for different fields of study, the process of preparing your poster, the importance of time management from design to production, and some of the programs available for poster design.

Overleaf versus MS Word: Templates 101 (February 24, 2021)

En esta clínica se presentan dos plantillas, una en formato MS Word y otra en Overleaf (LaTeX), para facilitar la creación de tu tesis o disertación. También se discute la estructura básica de tesis y disertaciones. Cubrimos temas como el formato de la portada, las secciones principales y los encabezados. Además, discutimos errores comunes de formato.

Writing for STEM

Research articles and proposals are how scientists communicate research findings and obtain funding. This clinic will introduce basic concepts of scientific writing with the aim of highlighting the importance of effective communication. Participants will learn about draft creation; additionally, we will discuss pointers on how to write clearly and coherently.

Your credibility as a scholar depends on your ability to employ relevant, recent, and reliable sources. Finding and reading them is the easy part; the challenge is having them handy when you need them and citing them appropriately in your writing. This workshop will discuss how to use Mendeley software to create in-text citations and bibliographies. Participants will follow a step-by-step guide beginning with program and plugin installation, followed by strategies to digitally organize your sources and ending with tips on using Mendeley in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Latex.

Your graduate school success depends partly on your ability to critically read, summarize, and review relevant literature in your field. In this clinic, you will learn how to search for, compile, and organize your sources in order to tell your own research story in a coherent, engaging, and appealing way. The session is formatted as an interactive workshop to give you the opportunity to practice these skills in a safe, collegial environment.

Documents you'll need for this clínic:

La meta de su carrera académica es presentar y defender su tesis ante su comité graduado. Este taller guiará a los participantes a través del proceso de defensa de tesis, les proporcionará herramientas e ideas para estructurar sus presentaciones y les aconsejarásobre hábitos efectivos de presentación verbal y no verbal útiles para la defensa y el futuro.

Research articles and proposals are how scientists communicate research findings and obtain funding. This session will review and build upon basic concepts of STEM writing discussed in part I of the clinic. Participants will learn about draft creation and revision, in-text and reference citation methods, tables and figures, and pointers on how to write clearly and coherently.

The undertaking of an advanced degree program that requires the writing of a thesis or dissertation can be a daunting task. This clinic will help students overcome the challenge of developing writing skills to meet the demands of preparing a successful research thesis. It will provide guidelines to help graduate students from all disciplines plan, outline, structure and draft their thesis manuscripts, while helping them build confidence as apprentice academic writers.

Research articles and proposals are how scientists communicate research findings and obtain funding. This clinic will introduce basic concepts of scientific writing with the aim of highlighting the importance of effective communication. Participants will learn about draft creation and revision, correct citation methods, use of tables and figures, and pointers on how to write clearly and coherently.

Your success in graduate school depends partly on your ability to critically read, summarize, and review relevant literature in your field. In this clinic you will learn how to search for, compile, and organize your sources in order to tell your own research story in a coherent, engaging, and appealing way. The session is formatted as an interactive workshop to give you the opportunity to practice these skills in a safe, collegial environment.

Poster presentations are a legitimate and increasingly more frequent mode of knowledge dissemination in academic contexts. They help you promote your research, gather interest in it, and network with peers in your field. In this clinic you will familiarize yourself with basic poster designs and their suitability for specific disciplines and fields of study. Moreover, you will learn about poster organization, readability, accessibility and appeal. Practice exercises will employ existing on-line resources for academic poster design.

Research articles and proposals are how scientists communicate research findings and obtain funding. This clinic will introduce basic concepts of scientific writing with the aim of highlighting the importance of effective communication. Participants will learn about draft creation and revision, correct citation methods, use of tables and figures, and pointers on how to write clearly and coherently.

Written communication in English is essential to achieving academic success in graduate school and beyond. Whatever your immediate and long-term academic and career goals might be, you will benefit from reviewing the basic elements of English grammar in order to ensure that your writing style is polished and professional. This interactive workshop will help you sharpen your writing skills and learn (or review) the proper use and rules of grammar in concrete contexts of reference and with relevant practice exercises.

Visual aids can be powerful tools to enhance the impact and audience appeal  of your presentations. Words and images presented in different formats can complement your presentation and appeal directly to your audience’s imagination, adding clarity and impact to your spoken words. In turn, cluttered visual design can ruin your presentation and detract from the focus of your message. 

This clinic will discuss the foundational skills and knowledge that graduate students need to prepare and deliver effective oral presentations. Students will learn how to plan, organize and structure a presentation for an academic audience. Drawing from basic speech communications principles, the workshop will discuss expository and persuasive organizing patterns, the importance of synthesis and audience appeal, verbal and nonverbal communication skills, etc.

Effective academic writing is logically organized, coherently connected, and smoothly developed. Transitions are key to accomplishing these writing goals; they include words, phrases and sentences that connect one topic or idea to another in order to sustain your reader's attention. This interactive workshop will discuss different types of transitions and how to adequately employ them in course assignments, thesis proposals, theses, and other types of academic writing.

Effective academic writing is both informative and persuasive. Its ability to engage the intended target audience and convince it of the author's claims depends not only on the quality of the evidence provided but also on the clarity of the argument.

Written communication in English is essential to achieving academic success in graduate school and beyond. Whatever your immediate and long-term academic and career goals might be, you will benefit from reviewing the basic elements of English grammar in order to ensure that your writing style is polished and professional. This interactive workshop will help you sharpen your writing skills and learn (or review) the proper use and rules of grammar in concrete contexts of reference and with relevant practice exercises.

Your success in graduate school depends partly on your ability to critically read, summarize, and review relevant literature in your field. In this clinic you will learn how to search for, compile, and organize your sources in order to tell your own research story in a coherent, engaging, and appealing way. 

Are you thinking of a way to impress your employer on the day of your job interview? Perhaps you want to make an impact on multiple companies at the annual job fair? Are you planning on visiting your top school for PhD and impress faculty members? Learn how to effectively present yourselves, your research ideas, and your curriculum in this interactive writing clinic. The clinic will allow participants to learn writing strategies on how to prepare an elevator speech and give space to practice it among fellow graduate students.

Clear, intelligible written communication in English is essential for success in graduate school and beyond. Whether you need to refresh some of the fundamentals of grammar, improve your writing process, and/or polish your writing style, this interactive workshop is for you! You will sharpen your writing skills by learning how to use proper grammar and transitional phrases to make your academic writing more effective and appealing to readers.

Being able to identify your target audience is essential when addressing the public in presentations, writing professional letters and even networking emails. In this clinic, you will learn about style, tone, diction and voice which are crucial components in writing. Through hands-on activities, you will learn to quickly determine your target audience and assure the adequate approach.

STEM students are not only required to successfully complete their research, they must also report their findings in clear, cohesive and appealing written reports. This clinic will discuss specific conventions and requirements for effective writing in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We will address how to write the introduction, methodology, results, and discussion/conclusion sections of academic products such as abstracts, posters, and reports. Participants will improve their understanding of the writing process (from content selection and organization to editing and proofreading) for academic purposes

Poster presentations are a common and acceptable means of knowledge dissemination in academic contexts. They help you promote your research, gather interest in it, and network with peers in your field. In this clinic you will learn about the poster designs appropriate for different fields of study, the process of preparing your poster, the importance of time management from design to production, and some of the programs available for poster design.

Your success in graduate school depends partly on your ability to critically read, summarize, and review relevant literature in your field. In this clinic you will learn how to search for, compile, and organize your sources in order to tell your own research story in a coherent, engaging, and appealing way. 

The workshop covers different techniques and strategies to effectively integrate academic sources into STEM based writing. Participants will learn how to select appropriate sources to support their research, how to incorporate these sources in their writing and how to cite them for academic audiences.

Abstracts are required for most projects graduate students will undertake during their academic and professional careers. In this clinic you will learn about the different types of abstracts that are commonly used in academia, the ones that are most pertinent to your discipline or field of studies and the steps that you should follow to produce a polished, professional and publishable informative abstract.