The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Peer Review

Sarah Klotz6/27/2015

The Paris Gellar Effect

Purpose

• Provide students an authentic audience for academic writing beyond the professor

• Help students assess and access their resources for writing (peers, CAS, family members, etc.)

• Increase independence in student writing• Make it worthwhile for students to write

multiple drafts• Encourage Distributed Cognition

Skills

• Revision• Collaboration• Clear and empathetic communication• Writing Process Knowledge• Responsibility• Confidence in individual and peer abilities• Metacognition about purpose and process

Language Learners and the “Blind Leading the Blind” Hypothesis

Process

• Multiple invention tasks leading up to peer-review draft (brainstorming, discussions, zero draft, etc.)

• Students bring 2 drafts printed to class• Worksheet protocol• Produce revision memo including reflection on

peer review with final draft

And now . . . The Ugly!

• Using a rough piece of writing in your think book, take 10 minutes to follow a short version of the peer revision protocol my students use. The purpose of this task is to think about what feelings we experience when asked to share our writing with others and to better understand how students experience the process of peer review.

Steps

• Take a few minutes to read the writing of your peer.

• Produce a reverse-outline of each paragraph.• Underline any confusing sentences.• Write down one thing the writer is doing well

in his or her piece.• Write down one thing the writer could do to

improve the draft.

Reflection

• How did you feel when you found out you would be sharing writing with a colleague?

• Did you find yourself being overly critical of your colleague’s writing? Or tentative in your criticism?

• Did you understand the purpose of the peer review process?

• How do you think students feel when faced with these kinds of tasks?

Questions

• How can I get students to actively engage in the peer review process?

• How can I manage a large number of student writers and still have them produce multiple drafts?

• What institutional and site-specific constraints keep peer review from achieving my purposes?

Q: Does the paper respond to the prompt? A: What’s the prompt?

Q: Does the writer make a clear claim?A: Could have been clearer but I found it!

Reverse Outline:1. The CA Drought has effects

environmentally & financially2. Effects plant life and fish life3. Effects human business and

agriculture

Pedro is an excellent reporter and conveys his feelings about the drought accurately and effectively. His style incorporates both educated discussion and down to Earth reconnecting.

One way to improve the paper might be to collect all information on one subject and create specific paragraphs rather than spreading multiple ideas throughout the paper. It’s ok to resurface, but you don’t need to repeat everything. Great Job!

Revision Memo Sample 1

Writing this paper was certainly a challenge but to quote The Beetles, “ I get by with a little help from my friends.” I found the peer review was greatly helpful to my writing process. I often get stuck in my own head rereading the same mistakes over and over but not knowing what it is that sounds off. Having a peer review was useful because having it read and interpreted by someone else allowed me to understand my errors in an approachable way. Alot of my sentence structure was off and after the review was over I even added an entire paragraph.

Revision Memo 2

I felt that the review went ok. More input from my peers would have been more beneficial. More time for each review might have helped and people focusing on their input. I made a few minor changes after the suggestions in class, mainly grammatical and arrangement. Mostly I edited on my own and with some outside help.

Revision Memo 3I thought the peer review process went a lot better for me this time around. I took your advice about searching out certain people in the class, and I felt that their advice was much more valuable than the last time around. With a combination of the feedback I got, and just rereading it several times, I was able to make some changes that I thought helped the content flow a little better, and be a bit more comprehensive. I suppose the revision process also pointed out what is the most frustrating thing with this (or any) research paper; there is just too much information to cover. Whenever I tried to make a point, I found myself trying to avoid rabbit holes that I could potentially fall down and not be able to come out until several pages later. I did notice and appreciate in all of my writing that I felt I had plenty of room to put my voice in the paper. I liked this ability in a research paper.

Take Aways