<\/a><\/p>\nAt a recent campus gathering of the Consortium on High Achievement and Success<\/a>, professors and writing professionals from a number of liberal arts colleges discussed how writing assignments, including the practice of commenting on student papers, create conversations that make a student feel connected to college.<\/p>\n (But not always. One student presenter at the gathering recalled the stark feedback on her very first Bates paper. \u201cI felt I had already failed,\u201d she said, adding that professors can do a better job explaining their disciplines\u2019 writing styles.)<\/p>\n At Bates, professors tend to accept hard copies of papers and make comments by hand, says Director of Writing Hillory Oakes. She\u2019s encouraging professors to accept papers electronically and make their comments electronically, a practice she admits is \u201cless common at Bates than at comparable schools,\u201d though she doesn\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n E-commenting, she adds, \u201cfosters a sense of conversation between the student-writer and the faculty-reader that crammed handwriting scribbled in a margin can\u2019t,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n