Caitlin McLaughlin didn't know that enrolling last spring in professor Ed Tower's economics course on international trade and development would lead to dinner in Vietnam with a World Bank official.
But it did, thanks to The Reader Project, a new joint initiative between Duke's Writing in the Discipline's Program and the Office of Alumni Affairs.
The Reader Project matches students who are working on class writing assignments with Duke alumni and Duke employees who have expertise relevant to the papers students are writing. These readers give Duke students something valuable: feedback on their drafts from the perspective of someone who has been working in an area they are writing about.
Tower's class was one of a handful taking part in the pilot project last spring. Students had the option of having a member of the broad Duke community help them think about how to put their ideas on the page in a way that would make sense to prospective readers. That's how McLaughlin, who graduated in May, ended up having dinner in Hanoi, Vietnam with Myla Williams, a Duke alum and country program coordinator for Vietnam at the World Bank.
A grant from Duke's Center for Instructional Technology provided students and alumni with webcams that allowed for more personalized interaction. The project also featured "think aloud" feedback in which alumni or employees used an online audio tool to record themselves reading the students' papers aloud, pausing frequently to make comments. Developers of the Reader Project believe that this kind of feedback could not only help improve the students' papers but -- more importantly -- that it encourages students to take their writing assignments more seriously and helps them learn to write with readers in mind.
Professor Tower, who listened to some of the think-aloud responses for his students after the course ended, thought so too: "I think [the student] is learning from this discussion to think about each thing he says and decide whether he really means what he's saying and whether he can support what he's saying," Tower said. "I think this is highly productive. -- This personal contact has the potential to really make a big difference."
The Reader Project grew out of an idea that Cary Moskovitz, director of the Writing in the Disciplines Program, began experimenting with in his own health-science-oriented writing class a few years ago. Moskovitz sought out health care experts on campus who would be willing to give his students feedback on drafts of their papers as a way to extend the audience for their writing beyond the classroom.
He was thrilled with the people who volunteered and the feedback they gave, but he realized that to offer this experience to students in a wide range of majors at Duke, he'd need to tap into a larger pool of volunteers, such as alumni.
George Dorfman, associate director of Alumni Affairs, liked the idea of engaging Duke alumni directly in the education of students.
Past volunteers have brought a broad and fascinating range of professional experience to the project: Duke employee volunteers have included the director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, an internist, a computer support specialist for the Academic Advising Center, a dietician from Student Health, and even the Associate Dean for Information Technology. Alumni volunteers have included the executive editor of CIO Magazine, a lawyer specializing in immigration, labor and employment litigation, and a former director of a management association office in Kazakhstan.
Because of the positive feedback from students and readers, the Writing in the Disciplines Program and Office of Alumni Affairs will continue the project, offering it in about eight classes next spring.