Peer-Review Guidelines

Teaching Assistant: Patrick Mooney
Writing 2
Spring 2015

What we're working on here: You are to receive feedback on your work from other readers in the class and to provide feedback to other writers. Often, writing feels like a solitary exercise — especially in academic contexts, where you write for a single reader, the course's instructor. But writing is inherently a social activity, as we discussed when we talked about the syllabus, and this exercise is designed to encourage you to think about your peers in class as an audience for your writing, as well. At the same time, you will be expected to provide helpful, thoughtful feedback to other members of the class on their writing assignments. Your main goals throughout any peer-feedback exercise in this class should be (a) to provide feedback that helps the person whose writing you're reading to improve that piece of writing and (b) to pay close attention to the way that other readers in the class encounter your own writing.

Notes and caveats: These guidelines are based on the criteria that we have discussed in class. They are subject to change as the quarter progresses; like any collaborative document, they are a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions from you on how to improve them. You should check the course website every so often to see what changes have been made. I will announce changes to this document in class and on the course Twitter stream.

Extra-credit opportunity: You may only take this opportunity during the time between when a peer-review exercise finishes for a writing project (though not for peer review for the final course portfolio) and midnight on the day before our next class meets. To take advantage of this opportunity, send me an email proposing at least one substantial, productive change to these guidelines and explaining why you think it is a helpful change. If I agree with you that it is likely to be productive, then I will ask the class as a whole whether they wish to accept it as a proposed change. If the general consensus of the class is that the change should be made, I will incorporate your feedback into these guidelines, and will give you a 2% bonus to your overall grade for the course. Whether or not your changes are accepted, you may only submit two such peer-review-guideline-change proposals during the quarter.

Realize that providing additional examples to help flesh out the lists below is helpful, but is not the same thing as making substantial improvements to the criteria themselves. For this reason, if your feedback is limited to providing additional examples, you should provide several, and they should be genuinely useful. If I decide to incorporate them, I will do so without submitting them to the class for evaluation, and you will get a bonus of 1% (instead of 2%) to your total course grade. This still counts as one of your two opportunities to get extra credit in this way this quarter.

You should be aware that there are limitations to how much extra credit you can receive and how extra credit can affect your grade; see the extra-credit opportunities document for details.

I also reserve the right to make changes to these guidelines on my own, though I would much prefer that proposals for changes come from you.

Guidelines for evaluating the work of others

Do

Avoid

Guidelines for when your own work is being evaluated

Do

Avoid