Project WiSch (Wissen Schreiben) of ISL, in cooperation with the Forum Wissen and the Ideas Competition for Students

The WiSch (Wissenschaft Schreiben) project was carried out in the winter semester 2023/2024 as part of the ISL (International Writing Lab) course ‘Academic Writing Partnerships’ in cooperation with the Forum Wissen and the Ideas Competition for Students at the University of Göttingen.
The interdisciplinary WiSch project was aimed at German and international students. It was based on the 2nd prize-winning idea ‘PEBL - Peer-based Learning’ from the Ideas Competition for Students 2021 - ‘Studieren verändert - verändert studieren!’, which proposes an intercultural learning-teaching experience and emphasises learning from each other. At the same time, participation in the WiSch project enabled the acquisition of credits in the key competencies and internationalisation points for the practical part of the ‘International Certificate’ in the InDiGU programme (Integrity and Diversity at Göttingen University).
The WiSch project had the following content and objectives:
- to promote an intercultural, interdisciplinary collaboration of students in tandems or small groups on writing projects in German and/or English,
- to encourage collaboration with Forum Wissen staff on the selection of topics, such as the history of the museum, the examination of individual departments or objects, the legal aspects of borrowing and exhibiting artefacts, etc,
- to write academic or journalistic texts as well as texts for social media in co-operative writing processes,
- to be accompanied and supported throughout the writing process by ISL writing consultants and peer tutors,
- to present and discuss the individual writing projects at a joint final evening in the Forum Wissen,
- to publish the texts resulting from the WiSch project on the ISL website and social media pages.
In concluding discussions, the students who took part in the WiSch project evaluated and reflected on their writing process as well as the course of their collaboration with each other and with the staff of Forum Wissen and ISL.
It should also be mentioned that the examination performance consisted not only of the grading of the writing product submitted at the end of the WiSch project, but that the intercultural, interdisciplinary cooperation between the students and the regular meetings with Forum Wissen staff and the ISL writing consultants and tutors were also included in the evaluation process.