Now that we've gotten a little practice working with the Writers' Exchange or WEx, let's talk about why it's such a useful learning tool. (If you need a refresher on what WEx is, check out the WEx Guide pt. 1 and pt. 2 and the WEx infographic in the Week Four module).
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| Peer Review Time! |
"Peer Review." When I say those two simple words in my in-person courses, I watch a collective shudder run through the classroom, as if I'd just asked them all to watch
The Ring video. Believe me, I get it. I've been in truly terrible peer review groups before. Sometimes people are too polite and just tell you that your paper is great, and you'll definitely get an A (and then don't, and you want to tear your hair out). Or you'll have that one person who tears your work apart like they want nothing more than to see you weep, but they don't offer anything beyond insults. And it can be hard to be the person giving feedback You have this whole essay in front of you, and you might not know where to begin in terms of giving the writer helpful suggestions for making their paper better.
WEx is an elevated form of peer review. In other words, it's designed to provide you with enough structure and direction that everyone gets something out of it. There is a misconception about peer review. A lot of people think it's about getting feedback which takes the place of instructor comments. But that's not what peer review or WEx is all about. Yes, you should get a healthy amount of feedback if the students reviewing your draft do a good job.
BUT, what WEx/peer review is really about is learning how to break down a text and figure out how to make it better. When you evaluate another student's work using the WEx criteria, you are training yourself to revise your own work more effectively.
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| This could be you! |
As you move on after English 1110.01, you will have to write a lot of papers for other classes. You probably won't have the advantage of peer review, and being able to work on the same project throughout the whole semester, getting instructor feedback along the way. If you have the experience pinpointing an essay's weakness and looking for ways to improve it, you'll be able to revise your work using those skills you developed in WEx.
Post either one original comment relating to one or more of the questions below OR respond to two other students below.
What worries you about WEX? What have your past experiences with peer review been, good or bad? What does your revision process look like now (how many drafts do you write, do you have anyone look over your essays, etc.)?
Well the thing that worries me the most about WEX is that I might accidentally miss submitting a post, as is what happened to me and my reviews previously. The structure of WEX needs some getting used to, and even with the Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 guides along with the infographic, I still feel pretty lost. But all is well, as it just comes with practise.
ReplyDeleteMy past experiences with peer review have been great! I was the Editor-in-Chief for a magazine back in Malaysia, so getting my papers peer-reviewed was a common occurrence, and a highly-anticipated one on my part, as I like going through my colleagues' comments, whether it be positive comments or negative criticisms. I just take it all in stride.
Well my revision process has been a bit wonky lately, as I've been swamped with work from other classes. I haven't had the time to write as many drafts as I intended in a week-to-week basis, so I'll just have to manage my time better from next week onwards. I have my housemates to look over my drafts, and they give me constructive criticism, which is good for any writer.
- Jaime Mah Jian Mae
I also shared your worry that I may miss deadlines. However, before there is a deadline I have been getting emails from our teacher letting us know that the deadline is soon. As long as I keep it on my calendar I feel comfortable. Very cool that you wrote for a magazine in Malaysia! I also have a lot of work for other classes, but I find it very valuable to budget my time and make sure that I complete drafts before the actual due date.
DeleteThe WEx platform will take some getting used to. I thought I understood the instructions, but still became slightly confused with the new medium for peer review.
DeleteThat must have been great experience being an editor for a magazine. I got most of my experience from other English classes.
-Cole Bowen
DeleteI am also really worried about the format of WEx and missing deadlines. My revision process has been a bit slow as well!
DeleteHa, yeah, I also LOVE getting comments back on my writing.
DeleteWhat I am worried about WEX is that it wont help enough with the common case of people who look at the paper and only review specific points while not going over the entire paper, and while we get some points to correct many more errors could be in the paper that wasn't covered. My past experiences with peer review have been pretty useless because in high school nobody really knew how to peer review and didn't want to be mean/ take the time and effort to review it. My process is to type out my paper as I go, review it a couple of times get a teacher or tutor to review, review a final one or two times and turn it in.
ReplyDeleteAli Razvi
I agree and am also worried that the peer review will not be a complete and thorough review of the paper. In my high school, the peer reviews were generally useless as the person would focus on just one part of the paper and not on the paper as a whole. This being said i think that WEX will promote quality peer reviews because some of our grade depends on it. People will also put more effort in because they want their peer reviews to be done completely so they in turn will review others completely.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that worries me about WEX is different opinions from different reviewers. Because I got very different views from the feedback I recievied last week, and it could be confused. My past experiences with peer review is quite great. Because I got some useful views from my peers, and made my paper better. So I am quite looking for recieve peer review from WEX. My process have been stuggled. English have always been a problem for me, and I have a hard time to find someone to cheak my grammer.
ReplyDeleteYutong Liu
I also have had times where peer reviews have been contrasting, and it is hard to determine what to change on an assignment. I am hoping that moving forward, this will not be an issue and the reviews will be nothing but helpful.
Delete-Winston Kuriger
If you have conflicting feedback, ask me about it!
DeleteSome things that worry me about Wex is that some reviewers might give contradictory reviews and suggestions. It will be hard to determine which reviewer to listen to. My previous experience with others reviewing my papers is lackluster. I never have really had someone really scrutinize my paper and offer really good suggestions for improvement. Therefore, my revision process is usually asking someone to read the paper and see if they notice any grammatical errors or sentences that don't make sense. Most of the actual revisions made come from me reading the paper over many times and slowly changing it each time.
ReplyDeleteTyler Young
I share your worry that the reviews may be contradictory. I also feel like it might be hard to listen to each person, especially if they may have contradicting opinions. However, I feel like if each reviewer follows the format that we went over in the wex review, then the critique can be very valuable. Like you, I like to have people look over my paper to search for grammatical errors. I feel like it may be harder for people to spot grammatical errors through a screen. I also like to read my paper many times over to make sure everything make sense.
DeleteThe condradicting reviews are also a worry of mine. I believe that I will decide which advice to take by seeing what reads better in my paper when I make both changes. Ultimately this is not that big of a problem because the paper is yours and the advice that you are receiving is just advice.
DeleteIn the past (high school) for the most part my peer revision steps were, to say the least, not very helpful. Every time we had to do peer revisions I would usually just pick a friend to revise my paper and I would revise theirs. While we did catch obvious mistakes (typos etc.) it's hard to give suggestions because it's hard to know whether or not your suggestion will actually improve their paper or if it might actually make it worse. I hope WEx gives me more experience with this and helps me develop the skills necessary to determine how to give good feedback to actually make a paper better.
ReplyDeleteI feel like WEx will be a good program because it allows for more people to see your paper in a more structured manner. Their is more of a rubric, as well as the fact that it is online, make everything more effective.
DeleteWhat worries me the most about WEx is the difficulty in telling someone what they did not necessarily do well in their writing. Throughout high school, peer editing has always been awkward due to the fact that I do sometimes find things that I think could be worked on but as a student, I don't feel qualified to be giving someone feedback when my own writing needs work as well. My own editing process now usually consists of writing down whatever comes into my mind before trying to read back over it for mistakes or sentences that do not make sense. Unfortunately, most of the time I cannot find the patience to spend more time than that on working on writing, but if I do need feedback on a bit of it I will ask someone for their opinion.
ReplyDeleteI 100% agree with you about not feeling qualified to be giving someone feedback. Writing has always been one of my weaknesses so I also tend to worry about giving someone bad advice on what to change or what to leave in their pieces.
DeleteAdditionally, I have pretty much the same editing process. Being an engineering major, the last couple years have mostly consisted of writing lab reports and keeping lab journals, so writing drafts is not totally necessary. However, I think in the future I could spend a little bit more time rereading my work and fixing simple mistakes.
What worries me the most about WEx is analyzing other peoples papers. I find it difficult to critique the paper's of people that I do not know. Also, I fear that I will not provide good enough advice to them and that my insight will not be useful. The same goes to my papers. When other people are critiquing thm, their advice may not be helpful and could possibly be misleading. If there is mixed reviews, it will be hard to determine which one to listen to and where to go from there.
ReplyDeleteIf you get mixed feedback and have a question about where to go next, fill me in and I can help!
DeleteMy past experiences with peer reviews has been mostly negative. Usually, when a peer reviews my paper, they either praise or criticize the writing without offering any real feedback with examples that I can use to make my writing better. However, I think wex does a good job of getting around this by giving you the ability to rank the reviews that you are given, and by making you reflect on these reviews. One thing that worries me about using wex is writing reviews for students in different classes that have different course themes than I do. I think it will be hard to review an analysis when I do not know the underlying theme that the analysis is about.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I have similar negative experiences in the past with peer reviews. In high school I felt like peer reviews consisted of praising and critiquing, and at least for me, there was very little genuine feedback about how to improve the paper. However, I am hopeful that the same thing won't happen here because we are given a very clear guideline about how to review using the Describe/Assess/Suggest outline.
DeleteI am also a little nervous about reviewing other students writing from other classes because we do not all have the same theme.
What is actually make me worry about WEx was the person review my paper dose not treat it seriously. The review he/she writes may actually miss plenty of mistakes I made, so I may not improve my paper in the further. In addition, I am also worry about I did not provide good enough review with useful advices, so the person who write the paper does not improve either.
ReplyDeleteThis worries me as well, however moving forward I'm hoping that the reviews of the ARP papers is taken more seriously than the practice WEx cycle was. I know that my peer reviews will be much more thorough for the ARP than it was for the sample cycle.
Delete-Winston Kuriger
For me in the past reviews have really helped me out it terms of finding mistakes in my writing as well as trying to make my writing that much better. IT can be hard sometimes to translate just a few stray comments into actual meaning towards your piece. The best way I see reviews going is that they can comment at a particular spot within a piece and comment on a specific section rather than just as a whole. I have typically written papers than have two major revision cycles before I can consider the piece to be complete and a final draft.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you have a good revision process already in place!
DeleteLike some others here, I am worried about confusing/missing a deadline. In an online class, we don't have the advantage of getting reminded when something is due. It is up to each student to figure out how to keep track of assignments. Despite my worrying I am confident I will be able to keep track of the deadlines, it is just something I am worried about.
ReplyDeleteMy revision process is me reading over my paper a few times. Each time I check for something different. First I check to make sure it flows. Then I read and only look for grammar. Then I reread the rubric/paper criteria to check that I wrote about everything I should. Lastly I just give it one more read and submit.
I'm most worried about hitting that 1659 at each due date, but that's my own problem to deal with. More importantly I'm worried about people either waiting until the last second to write a review or as mentioned getting no real feedback on my writing. The last time I took a class that involved peer review was in high school, and I think we can all look back and remember nothing but horror stories about peer reviews. Most recently a lot of critiquing I've been given was constructive in the way of taking classes on writing performance evaluations. There is an art to writing a review and when given good feedback there is a lot of good that can come from it on your final draft. My revision process is to read it over myself two to three times before I even bring in anyone else to take a look at my work, and even then I go back through and do some final tweaks before I every turn it in; in total writing it about three or four times.
ReplyDeletePast peer reviews have been very beneficial for me. From time to time my writing can go on a tangent, and having other people review the overall focus of my writing can help me stay away from overdrawn or irrelevant statements. Other people are often much more experienced in certain areas I have been asked to write about. Their insight normally adds a great deal of value to my conclusions.
ReplyDeleteWhen writing rough drafts, I always start with very informal and opinionated statements. After putting down a lot of thoughts, I go back and remove statements that are too emotional or cannot be backed up. I do this several times and add more content to support the statements that I believe are valid.
I tend to worry about the WEx because of the strict deadlines. I get nervous that I will miss one, and end up being locked out. However, since I dealt with that in the Learning WEx module, I have found a few ways that work for me to ensure that no deadlines are missed. My main strategy is to use my planner and check Carmen oten! My other worry with WEx is that, while it is nice to have focused questions in our peer reviews, there will be some other large error that will be missed due to the reviewer's inability to mark out specific parts of the author's writing to show and explain what is wrong.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, I have started my writings with a basic outline of what I want to accomplish in each paragraph. From there, I typically make a rudimentary rough draft. I then go back to my outline and source to ensure that I covered everything I had planned to cover. I read over my draft, add in more detail and fix sentenced that to me seem awkward. Then I typically have somebody-my sister, mom, a friend, etc- proofread my writing one last time. I make any final necessary corrections and then turn my writing in.
-Elizabeth (Liza) Goedde
Before accessing WEx, I thought it was just peer reviewing. But after tried it by myself, I knew it's a precise system. We don't need to worry about how to evaluate because there has guide. We don't need to worry about if peer doesn't be serious on it because there have rules. I'm really appreciate WEx and hope it help me on my paper.
ReplyDeleteI think WEx is a great resource and a great way to learn from each other as classmates. My worries with the platform are that I won't know enough about the subject matter or about writing itself to be able to offer insight and suggestions. I know that I will feel uncomfortable making suggestions in a situation like this. Having said that, I am also very excited about WEx. My previous experiences with peer-editing have consisted of passing papers around in high school and my classmates writing "looks good!" and maybe correcting one or two typos. I think the structure and formality of WEx will be much more constructive and actually help me improve my writing. My revision process usually consists of me writing a piece and looking back at it over the course of a few days, slowly making changes. I sometimes send my writing to other people for suggestions, but they are often friends or classmates who probably don't feel comfortable making too many suggestions.
ReplyDeleteWEx confused me at first in which I need to ask the instructor whether I did it right or wrong. I agreed with Haosheng Ai that WEx is a precise system and I need to constantly check the important dates on the Wex website. This online peer review is better because I can have up to 3 different persons to review my essay. I also agreed with Liza that by using WEx website, I cannot pinpoint the specific sentence that need to be fixed if I review someone's essay.
ReplyDelete-Aida Batrisyia Rosli
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ReplyDeleteWhat worries me about WEx is the timing. In the past when I have done peer review, it has been face to face with a hard copy so I can see first hand what my peer thinks needs to be improved on my paper, and I can make an annotation to fix it. On WEx I am worried that the reviews may not be clear enough and by the time you reach out to clarify, it might be too late.
ReplyDeleteMy worries with the WEx peer review system is that my personal experience with peer reviews haven't been great. Usually in high school we would exchange papers and I would work hard to give as much constructive comments and I get my paper back and it says "nice job, nothing to improve". Writing is like any other art form, it can never be perfect and always be worked on so getting those comments are not helpful. My hope is that through WEx there will be a lot of strong reviews due to the many steps involved and since everyone is doing a similar project we can all collectively work out each other's kinks and hopefully result in a lot of good papers at the end of the semester.
ReplyDeleteMy worries with the WEx peer review system are all the deadlines, and how once one window closes you can't access the other windows. My past experiences with peer reviews are okay. I'm not great at analyzing other peer's papers and identifying what they need to work on and providing good feedback. I'm worried that I may not help my peers with my reviews. I hope that my peers can provide me with suggestions to how I can improve my paper. I think WEx is a helpful site to aid me in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that I am most worried about in the WEx program is making all of the deadlines. Since there are several deadlines a week, all at 5 P.M., it is important that I remember to make sure to do the work earlier that day or the day before. I am also concerned because there is not much time between each of the deadlines to complete the work. However, I am mostly concerned because if you miss the first deadline, you cannot participate in the whole WEx cycle.
ReplyDeleteMy past experiences with peer review have yielded mixed results. In high school, my teachers liked to encourage peer review, but it was rarely required. Even when we did do peer reviews, they were often not helpful as my peers were hesitant to give me any negative feedback because it could be perceived as rude. However, on an essay I wrote first semester at Ohio State, I found peer review to be quite useful. I received truthful feedback on my rough draft and when I made changes suggested by my peer reviewers, my essay became much more polished and I ended up receiving a high grade on the essay.
Right now, my revision process is quite short. I usually write one very well-thought out draft and then have my brother or my dad go over it with me and make suggestions. I go back and make the necessary changes and then read over the essay one more time to make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors.
-Elan Kodish
My biggest concern with WEX is the tight schedule. Once I missed a deadline, I can’t participate in the following parts. My past experiences with peer review is bad or in other words a waste of time. In most of the cases, people won’t point out where I made my mistakes. Nearly no improvement can be made after the peer review. What’s worse, when the review meeting become more regular, the meeting turns in to a chatting.
ReplyDeleteShihao Wei
Ugh, chatting. (haha, I get what you mean).
DeleteIn the past, peer reviews have not been super helpful besides providing revisions to sentence structure and grammar issues. I feel like the people reviewing my work weren't sure how to make constructive feedback that would actually help me to make my paper better, just vague comments. The way that WEx is set up almost forces students to write constructive, helpful reviews by the way it is set up and the questions it asks.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to my revision process, I start with an outline or at least my main points jotted down so I know what my purpose of writing is. Then, I try to write my first draft without spending to much time worrying about how it sounds so that I can get all my ideas out. After the initial draft, I will go back through and edit to make it more coherent and concise. I will also have a friend read over to make sure my ideas and writing is clear before submitting it.
My biggest worries with the Wex system are the deadlines.If one assignment is not turned in,it Will automatically lock down the access to the others . our instructor is reminding us by sending out emails so I hope helps me stay on track.My peer review experience was back in high school.Our English teacher used to make us switch papers and peer review each other.However I am not good at giving suggestion for others but I will try to give the best suggestions I can for this cycle.And I also hope I get good suggestions and reviews from others on how to improve my writing skills.
ReplyDeleteNahom,
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ReplyDeleteMy biggest worry with the WEx is missing an assignment, as soon as i miss an assignment it seems like the rest of the peer review is gone and i just cant jump in a little late. I am also afraid that the reviews ill receive will not address real issues in my writing. A lot of my past experience with peer reviews are generally bad, either they don't really look at my writing or only fix grammar and don't really address big issues and major structure changes i need to fix. My revision process now generally consists of ranting for a while until i run out of ideas or i believe I've answered the prompt completely, then i'll go back through and structure sentences, fix spelling and separate paragraphs. Practically what i do is get my ideas on the page then move them around and restructure them to make an essay.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, I have experiences with peer review last semester when I was taking EDUTL 1902 course. After finishing our own papers, the professor asked us to give peer review on one of our classmates' paper. I think peer review can really give some help to us so that we can revise our paper better. I remembered that last semester I was working on a paper which topic is about "Gun control". My classmate give me some useful suggestions on my paper. For instance, she said that I can compare different situations of gun ownership in China and America and what kind of policies result in such situations. I think these suggestions are useful so I add this content in my paper.
ReplyDeleteXiaoyu Hu
My biggest worry about the WEx is missing one assignment, which leads to me missing all three steps. I had a little trouble with the first WEx, which showed me how important it is to get your submissions in by the deadline because one late submission may cause you to receive a 0/25. I am also worried that the reader may not understand my topic. Of course, if they don't, there's something that I need to change in my writing. However, I nervous that I will do all this work just to get comments back saying I don't really understand your theme. In past peer review sessions that I had in my other English classes, I would write a paper just to have my teacher tell me there's no clear topic, basically causing me to start from scratch. However, knowing this, I am going to try to make my theme as clear as possible.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest worry is missing the deadline of WEx cycle, for the first Wex assignment, which is learning Wex, I missed the submission part, then I could not participate review part or get peer reviews from others. Also, I am worried about the very different feedback, then I will be confused about how to edit my essay. I have experiences with peer review last semester, and it helps me a lot to make my essay better.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWhat worries me the most about WEx is something that happened to me already. I missed the first assignment, which guaranteed that I would have no chance of getting any points. My GPA is already too low for my major, so I really cannot afford to take any risks in my classes this semester. My past experiences with peer review have all been alright. The students reviewing my paper did an alright job for the most part (with some outliers in both directions), and I think I have been able to give decent criticism on other students' papers. Unfortunately, unless I am forced to, I do not have any sort of revision process as I like to minimize my time working on English assignments, since it has always been my least favorite subject. I am aware that this has to change, however, so I am glad we have the opportunity to use WEx.
-Kian Fotovat
What worries me the most about WEx is that if you are late to one part you are locked out of the whole cycle and can not get any points from it. My past experiences with peer review have been pretty good. In past English classes it was a major aspect of the class. Throughout high school I had a fairly extensive revision process, but I currently make almost no revisions on college papers.
ReplyDelete-Sergio Gabriele
What worries me about WEx is the fat that I already messed up. I didn't understand exactly what was going on and still don't exactly know. I wasn't able to do the rest of the assignment because I had messed up. When writing paper I usually start with a ruff draft that is then looked over by my mother. I usually write about 3 draft till my final is written.
ReplyDeleteWEx seemed straightforward about what it's asking, but I am slightly worried about my own reviews not being helpful and not useful. The structure of the submission windows opening and closing helps myself plan ahead more in regards to being on time with the assignment.
ReplyDeleteI have had decently good peer reviews in the past. The downside of them were topically people being too nice and afraid to hurt feelings, which really I just want feedback to better my work. Thats why I believe WEx will be good because somebody can hide behind a computer and be more honest, while I can get the feedback that I need to hear.
My current revision process starts out by writing a rough draft. From there, I read through it in my head and make any changes I feel that will help the clarity of the work. Then I read it out loud to catch more mistakes or weird dictation. After both of those steps, I ask my girlfriend and friends to look over it and for suggestions, because they will be straightforward with whats good and whats off about it. Then from there I fix any more mistakes and have a final run through and finalize the work into a final draft.
Aw, that's great that you want to make sure your reviews are useful. Glad to see this attitude!
DeleteI have to always remember that the WEx window closes at 5pm not midnight, though I'm used to starting to work after dinner. I'm afraid the advice I give will not be helpful. WEx requires me to write comments on particular aspects where sometimes I do not have much to say, so then I just push myself to say something. This may confuse the writer, because he is seeing what I don't really want to say.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit worried about WEx's submission windows. Most of my assignments are due at midnight, but WEx assignments are due at 5pm, right after I get out of class. I will need to stay focused and get my assignments done early. Most of my experiences with peer review in the past have been positive, but sometimes I worry that my feedback is not useful. I prefer to write several drafts of my paper then analyze it myself before having a friend or teacher read it.
ReplyDeleteEvan McMillin
We actually used to have due dates at midnight, but that ended up being a disaster because people would have a tech issue at 10pm, and our WEx admin is a one human who keeps regular business hours. You can always do the work the night before if that's your most productive time of day (it is for me too).
DeleteThe only part about WEX that concerns me is how similar all of the review criterion are to each other. I feel like I am just writing three of the same paragraphs when writing a review. In high school, we had to switch papers and conduct peer reviews for every research paper we wrote in the course. I usually send my essays and other papers to a friend to give me revisions. My grades have definitely improved do to the revisions that I took and changed in my papers.
ReplyDeleteI have a few worries about WEx. The first being that submission windows are quite small for me and also that the submission times are at 5pm. Normally for me, and as for most of us, our online submissions are due midnight or sometimes early in the morning or at class time. This is strange to me because as soon as I get back from classes, I would have to get on my computer quickly to finish off and double check everything for this online class.
ReplyDeleteOne more worry that I have is that the site is quite intricate, as in, the user interface is quite complex, and for a first time user, everything can be very confusing.
The review window and reflection windows are also quite tight as one is right after the other, so as long as I do not check the deadline for the class for 2 days, I might miss out on quite a lot of points.
Other than that, on paper, reviewing and reflecting on each other's papers sound great and can be very helpful, but there are also times where people could not really think carefully about the review they are giving which could result in writing in the wrong direction.
Yeah, the reason for the 5pm deadline is because our WEx admin works regular business hours. We did have the deadlines at midnight for the first semester and it was a disaster because people would have a tech issue and get locked out of WEx because there was no tech person to help them at that hour. You are welcome to complete the reviews the night before (you always have at least two days in between WEx phases). I certainly don't recommend not checking deadlines for two days since we have assignments due three times a week.
DeleteThe thing I have worried about Wex is that it has strict due limitation and once you miss one you will miss the rest all of it. It is hard for such online class, at least for me. So as far as I am concerned, I will do my best to keep schedule with course syllabus. And for the writing part I should write some paragraph to make people understand, it is more difficulty for me since I get used to write long paper to do that.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that worries me the most is how well the program will function. I had a format error trying to do reviews for last week, and I couldn't even see the text I was trying to review. I generally appreciate good peer review, but sometimes good peer review is hard to find. And considering this peer review is mandated, I[m worried about the quality of review I'll be getting. My current drafting method probably isn't sound, I basically write one draft and go with that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, WEx is still in (almost) its original iteration. An OSU employee built the whole thing, which is awesome but also means it's not going to be as streamlined as a program with a whole bunch of staff working on it. If that happens (the text running off the page), just copy and paste the submission into Word. Also, it can be hard to guarantee quality feedback considering it's a peer review (and the peers could be coming from other classes), so it's helpful to focus on what you are learning through the process as a whole, including you responding to the work of others and how that shapes your understanding of your own writing.
DeleteMost of my past experiences with peer reviews have been negative. I am strange in that my ideal review is one where someone will tear into my paper and point out every little flaw that they see. It feels good to be told that you did something well, but it doesn't really help make the paper better. When I did peer review in the past, most people were not willing to really say negative things about each other's papers and it became an echo chamber of people saying how good everyone was. I am hoping that WEx can avoid this as it is anonymous and impersonal, so people can objectively review the assignments without feeling guilty about saying something is bad.
ReplyDeleteI have had some difficulties with peer review in the past. People have a hard time of actually telling me what is wrong with the work in fear of hurting my feelings. I want to make every paper as best as I can, so I would appreciate people not holding back their thoughts. I like that in WEx, it is anonymous so hopefully people will feel more comfortable point out what is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it makes it better that WEx is anonymous because people would feel more comfortable hearing advice from an unknown source.
DeleteI do think WEx is a little confusing because I do not really understand the settings for it completely and I believe I might have a hard time getting used to its format. Aside from that, I do believe I have good experience with peer review because I review a lot of my friends' essays and do think that I offer good advice.
ReplyDelete