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Preparing a paper to deliver at a conference

For many of us, the presentation of a paper at a conference, is the first instance of
us taking our inquiries and findings and sharing them outside our immediate circle.
The additional knowledge and insight that we gain from this process is worth far more
than the cost of preparation and trepidation we go through first. The starting point is
to find the appropriate conference. Different conferences have different requirements.
Some will accept all papers submitted, others will referee applications. Some
conferences will publish the papers that are presented, some will only publish
presented papers after another round of refereed selection. Some conferences may
only publish the keynote speeches. It is important that you first learn what the
practice is of the organization who is running the conference - this will determine the
level of work that you will need to undertake to have your paper accepted.

In Australia the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia

(HERDSA) provides both State and National conferences annually for teachers,
researchers, administrators, learning support staff, staff developers and all those with
an interest in promoting research and development in higher education. There is
always a high proportion of papers and workshops that are concerned with University
teaching. The annual HERDSA conference is a good starting point and we have had
this conference in mind as we prepared this material. There are also a number of
discipline specific teaching associations that hold regular conferences. Ulti base has
an extensive listing of Professional Associations

HERDSA, like all conferences will have a particular theme and a set of sub-themes
they wish presenters to address. Some organizations impose adherence to their
chosen theme more rigorously than others. Some conferences will review all
applications (usually an abstract of the intended paper) and select only those that
meet a specific set of criteria set either by the organization or by the conference
organizing committee. Finding out about the organization and the way it arranges its
conferences is one of the first things you must do as this will determine the way you
go about developing your presentation.

However even before this you need to have something to say. As we have clearly
indicated throughout this module our interest is the communication and development
of the scholarship of university teaching. We assume therefore that your conference
paper will be related to work that you have undertaken to improve student learning as
part of your practice of scholarly teaching.

Most conference organizing committees will expect a conference paper to address

research findings, or report on work in progress, some times the report may be of
work in preparation but this is usually only acceptable when the work in preparation is
for a major research study. The conference organizers will be expecting to find
indications in the submitted abstract that the completed paper will contain

a description of the area of your inquiry

an account of what you did, why you did it and what the outcome was
the relationship of your work to other published research in the area
relevance to the conference theme
of interest to the conference participants

You can see from this list that to properly convey what it is you want to say in your
paper must be very clear even at this early stage if your abstract is to gain
acceptance for your paper to be presented at the conference. Your scholarly practice
will have already generated much that will be useful in preparing a scholarly paper,

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for instance

Inquiring into your student's learning will have produced findings, the evidence
Researching the literature related to teaching in your discipline and in higher
education will have alerted you to the theories that have emerged from
previous research.
Your reflections on this material will have begun to develop conclusions and
hypothesis for further inquiry and research and of interest to other teachers in
your discipline or university teachers in general.

As a starting point to developing your abstract write a few lines in response to the
following questions.

How does my work in this field relate to the themes and objective of this
conference?
What is the conclusion that I have reached?
What evidence to I have to support this conclusion?
How does other research relate to my conclusion?
What is the significance of my findings?
Why is this of interest to those who will attend this particular conference?

The abstract is usually between 300 to 500 words in length. You will need to write in
a very succinct way but remember this brief piece of writing must also convince the
reader that you are able to write in a scholarly way and present worthwhile findings.
If your abstract is accepted it will be used in the conference program to inform
participants and to assist them make choices about which sessions to attend.

Once your abstract has been accepted you canbegin to write the pa per that you will
present and that will be published in the conference proceedings. Robert Brown
(Brown 1994) provides an illuminating model for writing a scholarly paper and some
excellent advice. He says that many scholarly papers are written asthough they were
a 'whodunnit' which often require the reader or the audience to 'labour up an incline,
gathering 'clues' that lead to the 'knock out punch' at the end." He contrasts this with
the way in which journalists follow a different model one "which ensures that the
reader gets the most critical information first". He suggests that we adapt the
journalist's model to our own scholarly writing "simply by putting the most important
bits at the start of each section".

Writing your paper

Start by familiarizing yourself with successful papers. Read through some conference
papers, choose those that address issues with which you are familiar so that you can
exercise some critical judgment about what they have to say as well as how they say
it. The sensible thing to do would be to find papers that are relevant to what you are
going to say and thus 'kill two birds with one stone'.

Examine the abstract, and compare a number of them, what can you learn about
making your abstract engaging, informing and scholarly? Now read through the
papers themselves.

Have the papers followed Brown's model? Are there other models emerging which
are equally if not more successful in engaging your interest, helping you learn
something new and convincing you that the new is indeed new and based on sound
evidence.

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Presenting your paper

Read through the advice provided in Preparing and presenting a seminar to

departmental colleagues. Some of this information is applicable to planning a more
formal presentation such as a conference paper.

Reference:

Brown, Robert. (1994) "How to Focus Your reader with the Main Message" in
Conrad, L. (Ed) Developing as Researchers, Griffith Institute for Higher education,
Queensland.

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