Before you complete this last peer review recap blog post, first, take a look back at some of your previous blog posts about the peer review process. Second, write a final post that reflects specifically about this last peer review but that also considers the whole peer review process as a whole. For example:
- What was the most useful aspect(s) of peer review? What parts of the process did you find least useful?
- What do you think you have learned this term about responding to others’ writing?
- What do you think you have learned this term about making use of your classmates’ advice?
As I mentioned in my first few blogs about peer review, the whole process was new to me and really opened me up to peer criticism. I think peer review is a good idea in theory, but I have become somewhat disillusioned by it over the last few times. I agree that most students don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings even in an online environment, and while I’ve gotten some really effective criticism a lot of it has been pretty generic. I’ve also given some effective criticism and some generic criticism too. I’ve seen discussion in other blogs about anonymous reviews and have thought about that a little. Students might offer one another more direct and honest review if it was anonymous, but at the same time direct criticism (constructive and tactful) is a necessary professional skill. Not to mention leads to better products. So where is the medium.
There were a lot of instances when I saw things I would immediately edit or change, like ways to tie a sentence back to the topics at hand or eliminations of nominalizations, I’m not sure why but I felt like that is inappropriate or too invasive to just directly change something they wrote, and instead was more general like “It would bring things together if you tied your topic in to more sentences.”
Students must be willing to take full responsibility for their drafts as well. I think that we should present what is considered a finished work for the most effective review, I don’t see any point in critiquing anything less than that and it doesn’t mean anything having my own work critiqued if I already know I will be changing it, adding examples, etc.
The star system- still not my favorite, in my mind I can’t help but think ABCDE and don’t feel prepared to judge a fellow student that way. I think having students ask for specific feedback is an excellent idea, though again only really effective if a student has a sincere draft in place.
I really believe it’s a huge benefit reading one another’s work, because as an author you cannot escape the bias of your own perspective. It is others who will be reading your work, it is not written for you. I always find it hugely entertaining and fascinating to see what my classmates wrote about that was similar or different from me, and their different takes on the same material. I became interested in and gained a lot of respect for my peers after reading their discussions on the information we studied. I like peer review.
