In this interactive session led by Dr. Diana L. Gustafson, participants will engage in hands-on activities designed to enhance their skills in writing both executive and lay summaries. Drawing from their own research, attendees will learn to outline the first type of summary useful across many types of academic and policy writing: the executive summary. Here workshop participants will engage in strategies to help them highlight key findings, outline policy recommendations, and highlight implications of their research. In the second half of this session, participants will work on crafting a second type of research summary: the lay summary. Here, participants will be guided through drafting a clear and concise summary that helps them convey their work to a broad audience, using plain and accessible language, and tying in a clear statement of the real-world relevance of their work.
In the session, participants will also be introduced to examples of tools like the readability checker, which will help participants evaluate their drafts. By the end of this workshop, participants will have generated a clear list of suggestions for future revisions and improvement of their work, drawing on key lessons that will help them communicate their research effectively to diverse audiences.
Workshop Outline:
Identifying Six Key Elements of lay and executive summaries:
Purpose;
Audience;
Content;
Style and language;
Level of detail;
Tone.
Employing examples:
Side-by-side comparison of lay and executive summaries
Discussion
Exercises: Implementing lessons learned
Guided by prompts related to each of the Six Key Elements and drawing on participants’ research:
Draft an executive summary
Key findings
Policy recommendation
Implication statement
Evaluate and identify revisions
Draft a lay summary
Importance of language
Real-world relevance
Employing a readability checker
Evaluate and identify revisions
Discussion
Key takeaways and suggestions for future revisions