Responses to student writing from service learning clients. (My favorite assignment).

EVALUATION CRITERIA differ between the classroom and the workplace. The extent of that difference, however, is not entirely clear. An assignment in my technical writing class provided an opportunity to investigate some of the differences. This article describes the assignment, which fits into the category of "service learning," and some differences in evaluation criteria between instructors and clients outside academe.

Evaluation in the Classroom and the Workplace

In a recent issue of Business Communication Quarterly, Seshadri and Theye (2000) describe their study of how business professionals and business faculty evaluated the same set of writing samples. Not unexpectedly, they conclude that "business professionals read more for content and substance but less for spelling/grammar and appearance than do faculty" (p. 20).

While Seshadri and Theye (2000) provide information about the divergence between business professionals and academics, no research focuses on a potentially similar gap between service agencies and academics. This is an important issue because service learning is fast becoming a crucial component of university teaching. One mission at DePaul University, where I teach, is to serve the less fortunate. As part of this initiative, faculty are encouraged to incorporate service learning into their courses. Business and technical writing courses lend themselves well to assignments that benefit social service agencies that need business documents written for them.

One indicator of this interest is the increasing number of presentations focused on some aspect of service learning and business writing at the annual conferences of the Association for Business Communication (six at the Atlanta convention in 2000). Business Communication Quarterly has published two articles that mark the beginning of research into service learning in business communication. Tucker, McCarthy, Hoxmeier, and Lenk (1998) argue for the value and importance of service learning experiences and note that "Feedback on ... assignments is heightened when it comes from peers, professional managers, and professors" (p. 98). More …