Blogging Pedagogy - peer review

The Medium is the Mentor: How Failing With an LMS Altered My Teaching Ethos

Casey Sloan — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:39:55 +0000

Author:

Casey Sloan

Image Credit:

It took me a while to accept that I can never have all the answers. It took even longer for me to realize that this is a wonderful, fortunate fact. As an instructor, a tenacious part of me clung to the fantasy of a future of flawless knowledge and perfect leadership. Sure, I’d tell myself, I flail about now and again in front of my students, bewildered by a question or flummoxed by a comment I wasn’t expected, but that’s just because I’m relatively new to my course materials, to this emerging technology, to [insert convenient excuse here]. I liked to think that someday I’d be completely comfortable fielding any and all student issues and problems. I’m letting go of that idealized notion of myself as a pedagogue chiseled out of marble while embracing the teaching potential of uncertainty. I’ll tell you why.

This semester I am teaching a version of 309K and I decided to switch to Canvas for my classroom learning management system. Not only did I choose to make the great migration away from Blackboard, but I made the resolution that I would go totally digital for the first time. Papers, peer review, grading, syllabus, all of it, everything, online. Over this past summer I watched countless videos on how to run a class through Canvas, determined to be an expert by the time I asked my students to use the LMS. Of course, the first time I asked my students to conduct a peer review through Canvas, we hit a few snags. My students bombarded me with concerns I hadn’t preemptively thought through. “The prompt doesn’t say how we should use the highlighter. What do we strike through? Do we download the original document? Can we track changes?” Uh oh. I felt any control I thought I had over the experience slipping away. My teaching ethos suffered for it, and I could sense myself getting uncomfortable. That’s when one of my students asked me if he could use Word to conduct his review so that he could track his changes. “You know how to do that?” I asked. “Sure.” He responded.

That’s when I basically turned my students lose, and the results were fantastic. I asked them to mess around with the available tools, admitted that I couldn't be muc help, and encouraged them to experiment. I’m going to ask each student to give a brief presentation on the method she/he developed for her/his own peer review. Some used Word, some stuck with the Canvas layout. By letting them know that they had room to explore an unfamiliar system, without me there to tell them precisely how to use it, we were collectively able to generate a variety of ways to approach one lesson plan. When a few of my students had basic functionality issues with the site, I encouraged them to think about how, instead of asking me for the answer, they might go about answering their own questions using internet tools at their disposal.

Effectively, I’m now trying to think of digital resources as landscapes to explore, not as tools that come with definitive instructions. I’m also trying with newfound determination to foster a learning community where the members can lean on one another (and on themselves) instead of me.

Distance Peer Observation

Axel Bohmann — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:06:18 +0000

Author:

Axel Bohmann

Image Credit:

Klearchos Guide to the Galaxy

One of the greatest resources you can have as a teacher is other teachers’ experience, suggestions, and comments. At the DWRL we are lucky enough to have Blogging Pedagogy, Lesson Plans, and other platforms that help us benefit from each other’s great work. I use these regularly, but there is one aspect of teacher collaboration that so far I have not been able to incorporate in my practice as much as I would like to: immediate feedback and conversations about my (and others’) teaching as it unfolds in real-time classroom interaction (as opposed to feedback on artifacts derived from these interactions, such as lesson plan entries).

Attending the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Graduate Teaching Scholars seminar a couple of semesters back has given me the opportunity to both observe and be observed by fellow assistant instructors, and this has given me some of the most valuable insights about my own classroom presence that I’ve gotten so far. Now, the obvious downside is that it is relatively time-consuming to organize peer observations. I still try to do at least one every semester, but there are some activities that only fully make sense in the context of an entire unit’s trajectory. This semester, by accident I’ve come across a way to facilitate ‘distance peer observation’ over a longer period of time without imposing too much effort on anyone involved.

My supervisor kindly agreed to observe one of my class sessions and in preparation I added him to the course wiki. The initial purpose was purely for him to be able to have a look at the syllabus before coming to class. But as the semester went on, I would get occasional messages from him about new assignment prompts I’d uploaded or comments left on the front page. These would often develop into conversations about specific instructional goals, about future iterations of an exercise, etc. I’ve come to greatly appreciate the light-hearted, informal nature of these conversations and the feeling they give me of someone else being interested in what is happening in my classroom.

So, in future I will make sure to add one or two colleagues to my class websites and give them a chance to stay in the loop about what is happening in my class (and hopefully to share theirs as well). Especially with classes like RHE 306 or 309 that follow similar structures, I can see the benefits working both ways. I get inspiration from the exercises you design and you get feedback that will help you get the most out of these exercises. And it’s fairly non-committal: if I have a set of 7-page papers to grade this week, perhaps I won’t have a chance to look at my colleagues’ course sites, and that’s fine. But once these papers are done I’ll start a new unit and will be grateful for some inspiration on how to tweak my teaching.

I’m not suggesting this is a substitute for in-the-flesh peer observations, but it could work well to supplement them and to keep conversations going beyond the individual class session. And most of us have some sort of course website already, so the effort to get it going should be minimal.

Oral Presentation by Peers

Coulson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Doug Coulson

Image Credit:

Jbrazito's Photostream

I’m teaching an upper-division rhetorical theory course about legal rhetoric that requires students to write a 2,500-4,000 word research paper in which they rhetorically analyze two or more opposing arguments regarding an evidentiary controversy in a forensic dispute (typically this will be a trial or similar proceeding), and critique or extend a particular theory of forensic rhetoric as it applies to the rhetorical analysis they provide. This is a staged writing assignment that begins about a thirdd of the way through the semester and is concluded at the end of the semester. During the second half of the semester, I have students deliver oral presentations on the papers in progress.

This semester, rather than have students present their own papers to the class, I've paired them with a peer and asked each to present the other's paper instead. The detais of this exercise may be found here. After participating in such a peer presentation format myself at a professional workshop, I became convinced that such a format could facilitate a deeper level of peer review and collaborative learning as well as facilitate classroom discussion regarding the writing process in undergraduate and graduate student environments as well. No classroom technology is required for this assignment, although a media consolae/projector facilitates students who want to use technology in their presentations.

The assignment requires students to deliver an 8-12 minute oral presentation to the class (1) restating their peer’s paper, (2) identifying the conversation in which their peer’s paper is situated, and (2) offering constructive feedback or questions regarding their peer’s paper that might be helpful for the class to discuss to assist the author. Their peer in turn delivers a presentation regarding their paper. After each presentation, a brief Q&A period is permitted for the class to discuss the paper and ask the author questions if desired. The author may respond to questions during this period, but otherwise the author is discouraged from intervening to explain their work during the presentation but encouraged instead simply listen to the restatement and commentary offered by the presenter and the class. Part of the pedagogical value of the assignment is to liberate the author from the defensiveness that often accompanies presenting their own work and allow them to carefully listen to their peers' interpretations and comments on their work.

Students are encouraged to approach the presentations as writer sharing a peer’s work with fellow writers and to not be overly formal. The presentations are required to follow a formal outline, contain the content called for by the protocol below and be in the order set forth in the protocol, and be delivered within the stated time limits. When the time limit is up, the presentation is stopped. Students are allowed but not required to use audio-visual materials during their presentations as long as they’re not used to substitute for extemporaneous commentary.

The protocol I provide to students as an arrangement device is to spend the first 4-6 minutes describing the paper and identifying its central arguments and contributions. What appears to be the central question that the paper seeks to address? How would the presenter state the author’s central argument or thesis? How does the author develop the paper? In what debates or discussions does the paper situate itself? What does the author contribute to the conversation the paper engages? The presenter is then asked to spend a couple of minutes identifying the evidence and methods the author uses to support the claims made. Finally, the presenter is asked to conclude with 2-6 minutes of constructive feedback identifying one or two broad areas in which the paper might be improved and raising issues for the group to discuss to assist the author.

The assignment is graded based primarily on the basis of completion, contingent only on the students meeting the minimum requirements that the presentation follow a formal outline, contain the content called for by the protocol and in the order set forth in the protocol, and be delivered within the stated time limits.

Students have reported some anxiety both as author and as presenter of a peer's paper, particularly regarding losing control of the presentation and not being in a position to defend their work as author or mischaracterizing their peer's work as presenter. My experience is that students take the presentations more seriously when presenting a peer's work than when presenting their own, however, and in some ways experience less anxiety because they don't have to defend their work. They also appear to value the experience of hearing a peer restate their paper's content. Requiring them to read a peer's paper in sufficient depth to deliver a presentation regarding it has also proved educational about the writing process.

All in all I've been impressed with the results of peer presentations as opposed to author presentations of student work in the classroom. It offers presentations with some perspective for the benefit of the class and offers student authors a much deeper experience of peer review of their work while liberating them to carefully listen to how a peer is reading and interpreting their writing. It also challenges presenters to develop their skills of offering metacritical commentary for a larger audience. Students have approached the assignment with great care and discipline, and I expect the format contributes to this improved presentation ethic over author presentations.

Social Writing: Done with the One-on-One

Cole Wehrle — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Cole Wehrle

Image Credit:

Photo by Corand Poirier via Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (reference #P48,S1,P23104)

It’s been a few months since we had Criterion co-founder and innovator extraordinaire, Bob Stein, on campus, and since his visit I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the things he had the say. For those of you who missed it, Stein was showcasing a few new projects related to the future of the book, centered on the idea of social reading (you can hear Zeugma’s great interview with him here. Essentially, he argued that our understanding of reading is stuck in the 19-century and that technology has opened up new avenues for all kinds of new reading practices that could transform education. He wasn’t just talking about distribution modes like ebooks either. Instead, he was suggesting ways in which the book could be read and discussed community: discussions would flow beyond the classroom and a student would never have to face a difficult text alone. While, the technology that enables this kind of seamless discussion isn’t quite ready yet, I’ve been thinking about the concepts behind Stein’s idea. How did it apply to my teaching practice? Were there ways in which I could test some of these notions out in a first-year rhetoric and writing course (RHE 306)?

My first thought was writing itself. In 306 I spend a lot of time talking to students about their experience typing. It never takes long for the horror stories to come out: the all-nighters, the embarrassing typos, the misunderstood prompts, and, perhaps above all, the terrible blank page, ticking clock, and languishing page requirement. Of course, all of these problems are “student problems” and, though the isolation of writing is critical to its mastery, there are also ways in which the structure of 306 feeds into its less-than-welcoming appearance. In most courses a student’s work is a private affair, graded under cover of night (well, for most of us) and then discussed with hushed voices in tiny cubicles. But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. This spring I began instituting formal writing groups in my 306. I borrowed this from my experience in Journalism School. Instead of one-on-ones, I decided to block longer meetings with small groups of between four and five students. Every student would have to read all of the other papers in their group and be prepared to share a comment on their writing. Praise doesn’t count. This sounds a little mean, but it’s not hard to keep it in the spirit of good fun. There’s a bad writer in all of us and the best way to root him out is to acknowledge his existence. I usually started meetings by finding terrible sentences that I had written in my own undergraduate papers. We would laugh together and then diligently pick apart the writing. Then, one student at a time, we would look at awkwardly phrased sentences, silly typos, and all kinds of convoluted language with that same care. At first this can be a little off-putting, but the slight embarrassment and knowledge that other people, your peers, will be reading your work, can be a very helpful motivator, and its not hard to keep things light-hearted when you have that much material. These meetings have proven so useful that I began to work them into the in-class peer-review workshops and my grading methods. On a recent paper I decided that instead of providing any marginal comments I would write each student a letter about their work, offering general instructions for improvement but without any specific prescription. Then, in the peer workshop I sat my students in a large circle and instructed them to take out an extra copy of their paper. Some students had expressed anxieties about their own proofreading, so I decided to help them defamiliarize their own writing. We began a “rapid line edit.” I had each student pass their paper to the person on their left then check for one thing about the paper. On the first pass they circled every main verb (and emphasized weak verbs with sad faces or extra circles). On the second pass they found the longest sentence and the shortest sentence in the paper. On the next pass they looked for thesis statements, then topic sentences, then transitions, et cetera. In each case classroom discussion flowed naturally from the exercise and, perhaps because of the open environment that we had built in our small meetings, students seemed comfortable asking questions like “What exactly is a main verb?” or “What is the difference between a Topic Sentence and a Thesis?”. And, as I clarified my terms and taught short lessons on grammar students cheerfully volunteered broken and beautiful passages alike. At the end of class I handed back my letters to each student with their grade and they went home with my comments, and a copy of their paper filled with all kinds of zany marginalia that could guide their revisions.

Benefits of Paper Workshops

Stephanie Odom — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:13:10 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Odom

Image Credit:

DigiDreamGrafix.com

This spring I’ve been teaching RHE 310: Intermediate Expository Prose for the second time. The first time I taught it was two years ago, so I had plenty of time in between to think of ways to improve upon my first effort. I love teaching this class. I’m not sure I’ll get to teach a class like it in my new job, but I will definitely try to work in the practice of in-class paper workshops in future classes. Workshops are a cornerstone of RHE 310, and in this post, I’d like to describe how I run workshops, what I think works well, and what I will change in the future.

First, a little context about the class is in order. RHE 310 is a class about style. Instructors (usually graduate students) teach the class in many different ways, but practicing the prose style and genre conventions of a number of types of writing is usually the norm. When I was first planning how I would teach the course, I wanted the students to be able to select the type of writing they wanted to master. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable selecting styles for the whole class since I didn’t want to make pronouncements about what style/s of writing were superior to others and didn’t want to spend time on genres and styles that were uninteresting or unimportant to students. (I have since come around to re-thinking that stance and would feel more comfortable teaching a range of pre-selected styles now.) So, in my class, each student selects a prose model that they admire and the assignments give them opportunities to analyze and imitate that model. The range of models students have chosen has been incredible, as have their creative imitations.

As I said, workshopping is a key part of this course. The first time I taught it, the requirement was that everyone submit writing--any writing--for the class to comment on. Many students submitted imitations of their prose model. These models included magazine writing, sports reporting, technical guides, academic philosophy and film articles, and many more. But in that first attempt, I didn’t require students to provide an example or of describe the writing style they were going for, and that made our workshops ineffective at times. Students would offer advice based on what their general understanding of “good style” was, and the writer being workshopped would reply that their choices were justified based on the type of writing they were practicing. The students would shrug and trust that the writer was correct.

This time around, I changed the workshop submission template to give students a space to describe and/or provide an example of their prose model, which could be the main one they were working with that semester or anything else. Having the opportunity for students to read high quality examples of that type of writing has made our workshops more effective. During the workshop, when someone has a question about whether the writer’s choices are appropriate, it’s easy to turn to the target prose and analyze it to see whether the more experienced author made that choice. For example, we’ve talked a lot about pronoun usage and what that means in terms of rhetorical distance. If the student writer makes I-statements and someone asks if that is an appropriate choice (sometimes invoking the “I heard you should never use ‘I’ in papers” rule), we revisit the target prose and see if that author used the first person pronoun. This is one of several analysis and imitation techniques I’m able to model during workshops.

Other such techniques that I hope they internalize and take with them include reading prose out loud, making a reverse outline of their or another writer’s text, getting a thought down in rough form and playing with the style later, and just generally getting others’ input about clarity and style. I’m lucky that the students in this semester’s class are respectful and forthright, so I don’t need to do a lot of delicate balancing of egos or communication styles. Especially in the early part of the semester, students were nervous about getting their writing critiqued, but that feeling has subsided after seeing how their peers are not dismissive, rude, or totally off-base in their comments.

In this class, I love how these workshops expose students to a wide range of writing styles, some of which they will themselves write someday but others that they won’t. The range gives us the chance to see how writing varies and how what’s “wrong” in one rhetorical situation is “right” in another one. For example, one student wrote a reflective essay about a baseball game that he wanted to publish as a sports column. His style is casual and blunt, two qualities that you often see in sports writing. We talked about how in his case, it was acceptable to use slang words and even profanity in story telling, and how he created dramatic interest by using a series of short simple sentences, whereas in other workshops, we had worked with the writers to combine simple sentences into more complex ones to lend a more sophisticated tone. We’ve seen how in science writing, the passive voice is standard and appropriate, but in personal statements, we want to see more first-person pronouns. It’s also been helpful for writers to get feedback about where their readers want to see more evidence, what they think the argument was, and how they personally responded to the piece.

In the interest of space, I’ll briefly list here other practices that I’ve found facilitate productive discussion and some that I’ll change in the future.

What is working:

Having writers upload their papers to our class wiki 24 hours before their workshop (by 9:30 a.m. on Monday for a Tuesday class) to give classmates time to comment.
Asking everyone to post at least one positive and one constructive comment on the wiki before class to prime them for participating.
Distributing printed copies of the paper even though we can all read it on the projector. This is not necessarily for the writer’s benefit since receiving 18 marked-up copies of their writing can be overwhelming, but it’s been great for keeping everyone else more engaged with the writing.
Speaking with each student about their participation during our midterm conference and letting them know if I want them to participate more or give others a chance to speak, and what I think their strengths as a participant are.

What I will likely change:

Spending 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes on each student to give us more time to analyze and imitate at least one additional type of writing as a class.
Requiring everyone to revise their writing based on our feedback so that the stakes are higher and they practice weighing conflicting comments against each other.
Practicing close line editing techniques, though this is a maybe. Some students are doing this anyway and I’d like to be more involved in what they are suggesting, but I would rather they practice minimal marking and ask questions for clarification instead of making changes to the papers. Depending on the goals of the course I’m teaching, I may or may not encourage line editing.

Learning how to run a writing workshop is a valuable skill for anyone who will be teaching composition, and it requires practice and being open to change. It focuses the class on student writing instead of polished professional writing, it opens up the writing process for discussion, it teaches students that getting feedback on their writing is not going to kill them, and it lets them see how different readers react in different ways and that that’s ok. I will definitely be using this pedagogical tool in future classes and I hope my description of it here gives others some ideas about how to use it in their classes, too.

Peer Reviews Work: Observations and Reflections

Rachel Mazique — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:03:42 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

Jorg Weingrill

As we approach the end of the long academic year and my students prepare their first draft of their final paper for peer review, I thought it would be fitting to reflect on the pedagogical practice of peer reviews in a writing course.

First off, let me say that my colleague in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, Cate Blouke, convinced me last semester to make the switch to digital submissions of writing assignments. To reduce the paper load I had to carry, I asked students to share their essays with me via NoodleBib’s sharing tool (which relies on GoogleDocs). At times, students had difficulty sharing their papers via this tool, so I also made BlackBoard digital submissions an option. Checking for student assignments in two different web-based software programs required a bit of extra work on my part, but because I believe in democratic, student-centered classroom practices, I was willing to provide options as we made the switch from paper to digital submissions.

This spring, consolidating all of my classroom instructions, resources, and student work into one place (with the PBWorks wiki system) was a breath of fresh air. At the beginning, a few students had a bit of anxiety about using the online workspace; none of them had used a wiki before. One student even wrote (in an observation on her learning processes) that she found digital submissions to be “less personal” and "a bit confusing." But, a few weeks later, this same student wrote that it was easier to navigate the wiki and that she could do so "without problems."

A handful of students have run into a few glitches here and there (during heavy uploading traffic times), but the PBWorks support team has been helpful whenever these issues come up. And, as another student put it, "The wiki kinda grew on me. It saves paper :-D." So even though some students felt "apprehensive about using the wiki on a daily basis," these same students concluded at the midterm, "I can see how helpful technology, such as the wiki and other resources, are to the writing and reflection process. I actually like this way of organization much better, because it is efficient and fast." I fully agree and am a huge fan of the wiki.

I even have to make one final plug for digital submissions and contest a comment Ms. Blouke makes in her discussion of some of the pitfalls of digital submissions, "No system is entirely perfect. Digital submission means that I can't generally grade papers on the bus," and admit that I actually do take out my laptop on bus rides and comment on student papers. Once papers are all on the wiki, I simply need to download them and create a folder devoted to comments on that particular writing assignment. The rest of the work is done offline, and I do not need to be “plugged-in” until it’s time to upload my comments to their “Teacher Comments” folder. In fact, I plan on reading papers while in the air during my travels this weekend.

Now that I’m done plugging for digital submissions and the PBworks wiki system, I’ll go into how peer reviews work via the wiki during in-class review sessions. At the start of the semester, I envisioned that students would provide comments on papers digitally—much like I do with their papers. However, before the first review session, students were very vocal about having hard copies to work with as well. So, that has been our practice. And, as fellow bloggers Blouke and Jay Voss have pointed out, this preference is clearly an uncommon one. So, in my class, I require both. Students ask for printed copies, and they get what they want for those peer reviews. Here’s the rationale for requiring that these first drafts be uploaded to the wiki as well:

I can check to see whether they completed a full first draft:

Last semester, students learned that I was not going to read their first drafts for peer reviews, so I started to notice a trend of very “unfinished” first drafts, which did not help them or their reviewers. Reviewers were unable to answer all the questions I set out for them to respond to when their partners only had a page or two of their paper completed.

Students can more easily include specific examples in their feedback:

Since the peer review prompts students to be as specific as possible (e.g. if you’re confused, which part is confusing?; or locate and transcribe the main claim; give examples of where you see your peer explaining how arguments intersect/differ, and so on), rather than transcribing all of the examples that they want to refer to, students can download their peer’s paper from the wiki and simply copy/paste the relevant sections.

Increased sense of online collaboration and interaction:

Because I give student work high security restrictions on the wiki (only the writer and I can see that student’s work), peer review is the one time when students can peer into and access their partners’ work on the wiki. I grant assigned peer groups security privileges (but only to their peer group’s papers—and only for that particular paper). They are then able to type up a review and reflect on the paper copy and use the electronic copy as needed. Also, if a student is absent on peer review day, they already have access to the paper via the wiki, and I do not need to ask certain students to email their paper to their absent partners (this was an issue on several occasions last semester but hasn’t occurred this semester as this group has perfect attendance on peer review days!) The peer review process requires online collaboration because students usually do not finish their reviews during class time; they can use the wiki or BlackBoard to email their reviews to their partners. I also ask that they post their reviews on the wiki so I may see what kind of responses they had. Last, for multimodal compositions, electronic submissions are the only kind that make sense. For their final paper of the semester, I’ve encouraged students to showcase their understanding of visual and spoken rhetoric and incorporate a variety of multimedia evidence—whether podcast recordings of interviews they conducted, images they found or took themselves, or links to video sources that display authoritative testimonies.

And, since I use The Learning Record as my method of assessing student learning processes, I have the privilege of sharing evidence of the purposefulness and helpfulness of peer reviews from the students themselves. As part of the Learning Record, students make observations about their learning; I encourage observations that are relevant to our five course goals, or course strands, but otherwise, students are free to make observations on any topic on a self-imposed timeline (although they do have a minimum of fourteen observations to make throughout the semester). These observations are analyzed as data of how their learning progressed over time. In commenting on their observations, I focus on the content and not the grammar, so in the direct quotes below, I’ve kept the original errors and will refrain from pointing them all out with the [sic] reference.

One student wrote after the peer review session:

"For starters I didn't really know what to think of my experience with peer editing. I like the idea of having your peer proofread, make suggestions, etc. However, I don't think I got as much out of it because my peer didn't give me any critical things I needed to change or work on. It was mostly just what I was doing right, which of course I admire, but I know my paper is far from perfect. I found Ms. Mazique's suggestions very helpful though. There were some things I knew after being in class I knew I had to revise, but she gave me other feedback of things I had not thought of that were insightful. I hope to implement the revision goals to end up with a splendid 1.2 paper!"

However, around the midterm, and after the second peer review session, this same student observed:

"I think this is crucial to the writing process for not only the person we are evaluating but for ourselves. I know that reading and evaluating my peers' papers it enhanced my own paper. The reason for this is because everyone has different writing styles and techniques and when I would read some of the other papers I realized my paper lacked in some areas where theirs was more in depth. It made me look at my paper in a whole new way because of the feedback I was given and also the feedback I gave them."

A second student, who is not a native English speaker, has shown much improvement in his writing over the course of the semester. He made this observation after the second peer review session:

"For this assignment I review [my group partners'] paper. I felt like if I were Rachel for a second. I tried my best to correct their papers, and I also focused on their erros. I used my experience learned from my mistakes and applied it to their papers. I also used what I have learned from Rachel's comments. This assignment helped me realize how much I have learn."

I found this comment especially poignant after attending a Peer Review Workshop that presented research on how and why peer review works.

Susan Schorn, of the School of Undergraduate Studies, provides consultation work to instructors and faculty who teach writing-intensive courses (across a variety of departments). She shared research that confirms what I have experienced with my students.

For example, her presentation noted that Lundstrom and Baker (2009) found that students who gave feedback improved their writing more than those who only received peer feedback. Students with the poorest writing skills improved the most. Considering the improvement of the second student above and his strategy in providing feedback (trying to think like the teacher and recalling feedback he had received from me in the past), I would say that he relied on critical thinking skills in order to complete his peer reviews.

And, although research shows that peer reviews benefit those with the weakest writing skills the most, one of my best students--a student who already has a Bachelor's degree and is in my class only as a pre-requisite for a medical school program (that he's already been accepted to)--has also made an observation about the peer review process:

"While reviewing [my partner's] paper I found it very surprising how many errors in each others papers we were able to find in a single reading. I found [his] comments very helpful and insightful, and I think I was also able to point out some sentences in [his] writing that could be clearer with a little revision. It's amazing what another set of eyes can find."

A couple of other students made observations about how the peer review process made them think about writing style. For example, one student wrote,

"While analyzing and editing the writing of my partner, I learned many things about my own writing. I learned how my writing style differs and how I can better my own writing. Changing my word choice and syntax will help me explain my thoughts more efficiently and ultimately make me a better writer."

These comments align with other research that Schorn presented at the workshop with faculty from the English Department, the Department of Theatre, and the Department of Rhetoric. Schorn cited Monroe and Troia (2006) as finding that when students collaobarote their standards become higher. They are better able to assess their own writing.

We thus have evidence from multiple sources that peer review works when done well. One point that really stuck out to me was that peer review is an academic form of “peer pressure” (Schorn) that helps students take the instructor’s comments more seriously. After receiving feedback from peers, they are less able to rationalize that the feedback they receive from their teacher is just from someone who “doesn’t understand them,” or who is just another “really picky teacher.”

I’ll leave you with some other pertinent thoughts/options for peer review and links/suggestions for further reading in case you ever need a resource to justify your pedagogical practice of peer reviews!

Options for Peer Review formats:

Response-centered (doesn't rely on grammatical expertise)

--E.g. “I was confused when…” “This doesn’t make sense…” “I really like”)

2. Advice-centered (recommending specific changes)

--Sometimes detrimental when students give poor advice, or the wrong advice, or do not know what to say so they make something up

3. Ask students to do either or both

For further reading:

Check out the School of Undergraduate Studies' page on "Peer Feedback," which is a resource in and of itself, but also cites references to published books and articles on peer review.

Distributed Peer Review

Rosen — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:54:34 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

via Teaching Community

What is the purpose of peer review? Whom is it meant to benefit?

Over my years of teaching Rhetoric and Writing, I have learned through repeated student feedback that peer review (student-generated feedback on student writing) doesn’t work. My students tell me their peers are “too nice” or “too vague” and that they prefer “more teacher feedback” since I’m the one “giving them a grade.” In the past I’ve tried to fight this trend with highly specific and focused peer review instructions, to improve the quality of student-generated feedback But lately I’ve shifted my focus from the peer review benefits for the “reviewee” to the benefits for the “reviewer.” I’ve cut out the feedback stage of peer review for one major assignment because I’ve realized that the greatest benefit of peer review can actually be exposure to other student writing and the recognition—and incorporation—of successful writing strategies.

I have come to this realization by encouraging public writing on a class blog. In my Rhetoric of Health class, we use a class blog as the repository for most major writing assignments, including a research summary, a rhetorical analysis, and a persuasive essay. By the time we get to our second unit and our second assignment—the rhetorical analysis—the blog already has an archive of material, and students are already accustomed to posting on and following it. (See my Distributed Peer Review lesson plan for more information.) When they write their rhetorical analyses, rather than trade papers with one partner, students post their papers (as blog posts) for all to see. Furthermore, students have staggered due dates for these blog posts, so most students get the chance to read several student examples of the assignment before they even begin their own. As students read each others’ posts in order to leave required comments, they begin to notice how their peers have handled the assignment and which strategies are more successful. To encourage this kind of recognition, we spend some time in class examining those different strategies.

For example, one day we took a sample of blog posts to examine different types of introductions. The five posts due that day had used three different kinds of introductions: some students had offered an anecdote, some had provided background information, some had introduced a problem. We used these student examples to begin a discussion of the advantages and uses of each type of introduction. For instance, we noted that an introduction with a personal anecdote can quickly establish the writer’s ethos as someone close to, and passionate about, the issue at hand. We then used this conversation as a spring board to consider other types of introductions, and their respective advantages and uses. And this in-class discussion reinforced what most of the students had already realized: that they could learn from each other’s writing.

As the unit progressed, I saw student writing consistently improve, due to simple exposure to many examples and from active experimentation with strategies that students saw working in their peers’ work. One obvious disadvantage of this plan is that some students will have the benefit of reading many student examples before they write their rhetorical analysis, while some will see few or none. But this disadvantage could be mitigated by giving the stronger writer earlier due dates or, as I did, giving all students the option to revise their work at any time during the unit. This organic, distributed peer review resulted in improved writing across my entire class. And no one told me that peer review “wasn’t working” or that their peers’ feedback “wasn’t helpful.” They weren’t getting feedback; they were generating it and applying it to their own writing.

The Case for Digital Submission

Cate Blouke — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:53:39 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

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Cate Blouke

It's the end of the semester, and across the nation an all-too-familiar sight is littering the hallways of English departments: the box of student essays. Sometimes it's an envelope, sometimes it's a stack of papers half-shoved into a mailbox or under a door. But the sight of these final papers abandoned by their students and/or professors reinforces my conviction that it's time for us to move to digital submission.

While assessing student essays on a computer screen isn't without challenges (I find myself making many fewer positive comments in the marginal remarks, for example), there are a lot of good reasons why I made the decision to go digital. And I encourage you to consider making the switch for the semester ahead. First and foremost, digital submission improves work flow - for everyone.

No more misplaced assignments: word processing software has its risks regardless of how the final product is formatted. Students will inevitably forget to save documents or suffer computer crashes and viruses before an assignment is due. But digital submission means that once an assignment is turned in (via e-mail or the class wiki or website), there's no longer a risk of any assignment going astray. With the date and time stamping of any digital platform, there's also never any question of when an assignment was submitted.

Coursework isn't restricted to class time: when assignments can be turned in from a computer, the time-frame for submission is opened up well beyond the one hour window two or three days a week. This expansion can benefit both students and instructors. Digital submission gives you the freedom to allow students extra time to revise after Thursday's useful class discussion, but they can still get their papers turned in before your weekend grading binge. It can also reduce turn-around between assignments. You can ask your students to submit short papers each Tuesday, but you won't have to kill yourself to get them graded by Thursday if you can provide your feedback over the weekend.

Feedback becomes a semester-long process: when your comments are stored in a digital file, you (and your students) can access your feedback at any time. You can say farewell to the days of file folders filled with multiple drafts and assignments (which often go astray or unexamined). When grading a student's essay 2, you can look back at essay 1 to see how they've improved (or if they're still struggling with the same problems).

Grading revisions is a lot easier: when you have digital copies of both the original and the revised version of an essay, comparing the documents is a snap with Microsoft Word's "compare documents" function. The changes a student has made will be highlighted, and you can quickly discover if they followed your suggestions and how rigorously they revised.

Smaller environmental impact: this might go without saying, but digital submission is obviously a way for composition instructors to feel better about the environmental impact of their assignments. Given that the U.S. paper industry (alone) consumes 83 million tons of paper each year, requiring 40.5 million trees, and "clear cutting an area half the size of Texas" - I like to think I'm making some small effort to reduce those numbers.

All this being said, I do agree with my colleague, Jay Voss, who argues for the value of seeing one's writing in print. While I encourage digital submission for my students' final assignments, I always hold peer review workshops in print. Though I'm dubious about the efficacy of the feedback they receive, the physical act of marking up a paper (whether their own or a fellow student's) has proved extremely valuable for my students.

No system is entirely perfect. Digital submission means that I can't generally grade papers on the bus, and I'm less prone to use Word's comment function for positive feedback. But in the age of e-readers and social networking, I can only think that asking students to submit assignments electronically is an exercise that better prepares them (and me) for the times to come.

Blogging in the Classroom: Peer Review Plus Camaraderie!

Gulessarian — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:45:41 +0000

Author:

Lisa Gulessarian

Image Credit:

Lisa Gulessarian

As a student myself in Dr. Lester Faigley’s Visual Rhetoric class four years ago, we used Blackboard’s “Forum” feature to initiate online discussions about our readings while sitting in front of computers in the same classroom. I remember how invigorating it was to respond to my classmates’ posts as they wrote them. I also found that having a written record of my thoughts on the readings served as great review for when I wanted to refer to theories from these readings later in the course. In Dr. Faigley’s course, our class forum was a way for a shy, novice graduate student (i.e. ME!) to contribute to the discussion without feeling overwhelmed.

Now, years later, I’m experimenting with a course blog in my Rhetoric of Suburbs & Slums class. I’m already quite happy with the results.

At first, I envisioned the blog as a place for students to share their research with other students, but after a few days of mulling over using a new pedagogical tool in my class, I quickly realized that the blog could do much more than function as a mini-version of Facebook’s “Share a link” feature. Not only could I get students to share their research with their peers—with a blog, I could get them to work on their writing!

After their initial blog post where they introduced themselves (and became familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Wordpress), I’ve had students write two longer blog posts. The first was a rhetorical analysis paragraph (on one appeal from the source that they’d be analyzing in their first paper). The second was a criteria list based on a category of evaluation of their own choosing (related to the source that they’d be evaluating in their second paper). For both blog posts, I’m impressed at the level of engagement and effort that students put into writing and conceptualizing their posts.

I’m equally impressed by the careful and astute comments their peers left them. After each post was due, I asked students to post comments on the posts above and below their own. They wrote these comments in class as I walked around the room listening to their keys clicking and their videos playing (in their posts, many students included the videos or the images that they were going to analyze/evaluate). For each blog post, I asked students to watch for common setbacks, such as not tying audience to the appeal (for the rhetorical analysis post) or coming up with too-broad criteria (for the criteria list post). In both cases, students were able to alert their peers of potential problems with short comments (I asked for 6 sentences). After reading her peer’s criteria post on a music video, one student wrote “You could make [your criteria] clearer by mentioning which of these criteria are specific to which aspect of the video (images, music, lyrics, etc.) since it is a little confusing if you are evaluating a video or a song or the text of the lyrics.” Another student saw a problem in his peer’s too-general criteria and let his peer know that “The criteria of visual elements is also a little vague. Visual elements can range from camera angles to color use to computer generated elements like change is saturation and use of negative, so being specific on exactly what kind of visual elements you are referring to would be helpful.” And another student brought in prior knowledge to help her peer enlarge the scope of his criteria: “Also another thing you could talk about for visual style of a drama is lighting. In a film class I recently took my professor discussed some of the differences between sitcoms and dramas. He felt that sitcoms consist of generally bright lighting. Is this the same for dramas? Or do you think there is contrast with varied lighting techniques? Just something to possibly think about if you feel that you could add more to the explanation of that criterion.”

Of course, with this blog posts, as with any peer review, my students also gained a deeper knowledge of how they should proceed in their own writing. One student, after reading her peer’s criteria list, wrote: “I also like the way you pull direct examples from the show for your blog post (I probably should have done that for mine….oops!).” Another student told her peer that she used his post as a guide in writing her own criteria list post by writing “I actually used yours to write mine! THANKS!” Because I’m using the Learning Record, my students can document the moments that they gained confidence through the comments they both received and left for others.

An added benefit to all this blogging is that my students end up learning about each other. The camaraderie in my class is one that I would like to recreate in my future classes. Now students know about each other’s interests outside of class. After reading a blog post on a specific category of movies, one student exclaimed: “You seem to be very excited about this particular category and I feel like the information you have written just flowed out of you while blogging!” Another student, who especially appreciated her peer’s detailed justifications of her chosen criteria, happily admitted that “The way you wrote about the criteria that you’ll use to evaluate this source is really interesting. Your detailed writing makes me want to see the video now!”

In general, I’ve loved using blogging in my course. I will continue to ask students to compose mini-writing assignments for the blog. But most importantly, I will definitely make sure that they comment on their peers’ posts.