Parent Learners white paper
A research team needed to take months’ worth of complex research on an underrepresented student group and turn it into an engaging and compelling white paper.
Role: Lead Author, ProjectEd/Entangled Group
The context
Entangled Group collaborated with Imaginable Futures on a large research project into the lives and challenges of non-traditional college students. The research team asked me to write a white paper that highlighted their findings. The body of research was large and complex.
What I did
To cut through it, I:
read key background documents and research findings
created an outline and began populating it with raw content
redrafted and refined the writing
kept the subject-matter expert (SME) team in the loop throughout
Challenges I faced
I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the terms particular to this topic. Plus the team had generated a number of neologisms along the way and didn’t initially have broad agreement about nomenclature and usage.
I assembled a glossary to serve as a common reference. This enabled us to identify possible misunderstandings and establish consistent usages.
The end result
The white paper was widely disseminated, and helped advance the team’s research, leading to the development of a thought-leadership prize in this domain called the Rise Prize.
The team also asked me to write the paper on that one too!
Read the original Parent Learners white paper.
