Student Research at Duke

Well, this blog isn’t really dead, but that’s what we always called the wrap-up meeting in the newspaper business.

I think it went really well! More students than I would have expected turned out to be regular/compelling/entertaining correspondents. And the things they shared went way beyond what I would have hoped for in insight and candor.

We could have used more photos overall, but the Lyceum tool has been such a pain in that regard that I guess we should just be happy we got what we did. I especially enjoyed the images taken from the research and the ‘lab goes on a holiday’ shots.

The hit traffic shows we entertained more than 2,000 unique visitors in July, which is fairly respectable given how little marketing of the site we actually did.
This fall, we plan to launch a new online research magazine “research @ duke” that will have a “voices” section expressly for this sort of project. Blogs have popped up here and there on campus — especially this summer — but you really have to know what you’re looking for to find them.

Thanks for tuning in! If you loved this or hated it, feel free to drop me a line at karl.bates (at) duke.edu

The best/worst feature of blogging is probably the public comments. It’s just great to hear what people think and to share ideas, provided they aren’t incredibly rude flamethrowing trolls.

While our blog isn’t exactly ruling the world yet, we have had a few comments posted, mostly between members of the HHMI group. Unlike the posts, comments are moderated before they go up, just to avoid trouble. One student, however, was a little quick on the ‘approve’ button this week and got a rude surprise when she saw what the porno spam-bot had sent her page.

It’s all part of our grand learning curve…