Dialogue around Written Work

Written and spoken comments on each installment of a project and on subsequent revision in response to those comments. If your advisors (or instructors) assemble a portfolio of your installments and the comments, they can look back over these and so their interactions with you—even when they are not an expert in your project's topic—are more likely to be generative. That is, the comments help you to bring to the surface, form, and articulate your ideas as a researcher.

What the instructor needs the student to hear (or the advisor needs the advisee to hear):

• I try to create a dialogue with each student around written work, that is, around your writing, my responses, and your responses in turn. For each submission I make comments on a cover page that aim to show you your voice has been heard and to reflect back to you where you were taking me. After the overall comments I make specific suggestions for how to clarify and extend the impact on readers of what was written. I usually ask you to revise and resubmit the submission. The idea is not that you make changes to please me as the instructor or to meet some unstated standard, but that you as a writer use the eye of others to develop your own thinking and make your written exposition of that thinking work better on readers. I may continue to request revision when I judge that the interaction can still yield significant learning. Such a request does not mean your (re)submission was bad. Even when first submissions of written submissions are excellent, angles for learning through dialogue are always opened up.

• I hope my comments capture where you were taking me and that my suggestions help you see how to clarify and extend the impact on readers of what you have written. However, after letting my comments sink in, you may conclude that I have missed your point. In that case, my misreading may stimulate you to revise so as to help readers avoid mistaking the intended point. However, if you do not understand the directions I saw in your work or those I suggest for the revision, a face-to-face or phone conversation is the obvious next step. I say this in recognition of the definite limitations that written comments have when writers and readers want to appreciate and learn from what each other is saying and thinking. Indeed, please arrange a one-on-one session without delay if you do not see how you are benefiting from the whole "Revise and resubmit" process.

• I recognize that dialogue around written work departs from most students' expectations of "produce a product one time only and receive a grade." And I know that most students at first are uncomfortable exposing their work and engaging in extended dialogue over it. So I continue to look for ways to engage students in this process that take into account your various backgrounds and dispositions and my own.