Twitter Chats are a way for graduate students to interact with higher education professionals in the field, via the Twitter platform! Typically these chats are one hour in length and consist of 4-5 panelists who are knowledgeable about a specific topic. Previously, our twitter chats have discussed: the scholarship of teaching and learning, applying for national dissertation fellowships, and how recent graduates navigated the job market and got to their current positions. If you want to review any of our prior sessions, you can type #DivJChat in the search bar of Twitter and our chats should appear!

For this fall semester, we have two chats scheduled (see month and topic below). We are looking for volunteers to help facilitate the chat. Your responsibilities would essentially be to engage with panelists by asking additional questions (that you can prep ahead of time if you wish) and to respond to prompts from the @AERADivJGradNet host (e.g., asking those who are participating to include their name, year, and institution, or asking for examples from participants).

Facilitators are a key part of driving traffic to the chats-- The more engagement we are able to get during these chats, the more likely other graduate students will see #DivJChat topics, questions, and answers! We would love to have multiple facilitators signed up for each chat.

HAAAAAALP! Because so much of our programming relies on web technology, we are in need of folx who can make our messaging and advertisements look professional, clear, and...well...not boring. If you're a pro at Canva, Publisher, Powerpoint (or some fancier software we know nothing about), we would appreciate your help!

This position would be responsible for creating our fliers over the course of the fall semester. This will include the graphics for two Twitter Chats, one social event, one social connections page to advertise our Slack workspace, and one virtual writing session graphic (5 graphics in all).

Since April, AERA DivJ Grad Reps have been holding weekly virtual writing sessions. We originally started these groups as a quick way for grad students to connect despite the cancellation of the 2020 AERA Annual Meeting, but they have turned into a sustained and supportive scholarly community made up of grad students from all over the United States and Canada. We are excited to be extending these sessions into fall 2020 semester!

We are looking for volunteers for two distinct roles related to the writing sessions:

1. Volunteers to Lead Mindfulness-- Each session begins as a large group while we wait for most everyone to arrive and use the chat feature, or just talk out loud for those who are comfortable! Volunteer leaders will call the group together after this informal chat period and lead participants in a moment of mindfulness-- encouraging participants to center themselves, remove distractions, appreciate their surroundings, and bring consciousness, intentionality, and commitment to the day's work.

2. Breakout Room Facilitators-- After the moment of mindfulness, we move into break-out rooms of 3-6. Facilitators in each room are responsible for leading introductions, encouraging members to set concrete intentions for the session, and setting timelines for the work (e.g., determining whether the group wants to have a mid-point check in, or possibly just work through to the end of the session). Some groups may also dedicate time to sharing resources, or asking questions of the group. In the past these questions have involved topics like 'strategies for connecting theoretical frameworks,' 'suggestions for language/resources for a syllabus,' 'suggestions for resources related to coding qualitative interviews,' etc.

Virtual writing sessions will take place from on Wednesdays from 7-10pm eastern time, September 9 - December 2. If you are interested in volunteering during a writing session to lead mindfulness for the whole group (within the first half hour) and/or facilitating a breakout session (typically the entire three hours), please indicate your availability below. To keep the time-commitment manageable and to include as many volunteers as possible, we have separated the volunteer weeks into the first, second, third, fourth, fifth Wednesdays of each month for each position. Feel free to select as many or as few slots as you like.