Today's Agenda: Peer review! A REMINDER from the facilitators on your purpose in this paper: Facilitators' experiences with peer review: What are YOUR experiences with peer review? What kind of feedback did you get? What's worked? What hasn't?  Let's make a pact with one another....  REVISION VS. EDITING  Peer review time!  The process: For next time: PF 1 is due! Meeting place for Tuesday:

Today's Agenda: Peer review!

A REMINDER from the facilitators on your purpose in this paper:

• On the whole, it's important for the student not to summarize the piece they are writing about. We are to analyze/explain the author's purpose, context, audience, and rhetorical tactics, why they made the choices they did in each, and how effective (or ineffective) their work is, and give specific reasons for our assertions.   
• dl says: YUP. Well said. And your thesis should be organized in a way that introduces how you've looked at all this. 

Facilitators' experiences with peer review:

• From a colleague who has been in the USA only a few years: I decided to facilitate during peer review because I know I have had a lot of mistakes and my friends helped me by using this tool. One of my experiences in class was when I used to write confusing sentences without realizing it. By peer reviewing, my classmates helped me to see my paper from a different perspective, corrected my grammatical errors, the struture of the paragraphs, and helped me make my point clearer. Sometimes peer review was not as effective when people would rush through it just to leave class early, or because they had too many papers to peer review. They would put silly comments or things that weren't helpful at all. The feedback I would get back would say comments like: fix your thesis, make this idea more understandable, "where's the main idea," grammar errors, your conclusion is repetitive, etc. 
• (BUT, I think she's saying, they didn't make suggestions on how to address these things. When they do, it helps me more.)
• For our peer review, I think the most important thing we need to do is to be honest with each other about how we think the paper is and what needs to be improved. I don't know how many times I have gone to peer reviews and gotten no help at all because no one wants to hurt one another's feelings.
• The thing I mainly  notied that worked in peer reviews is when you have more people read the paper rather than less. That way when someone says something specific about a certain paragraph, you know that if 3 other people said the same thing then there is something wrong with that paragraph.
• What didn't work in the peer reviews I experienced was when I only reviewed the papers of the people that I sit around. I don't think these people will be biased. I just feel like these people typically shrug off your mistakes instead of being clear what needs to be fixed. I think they do this because they have a better understanding of your personally and when writing a paper, it isn't always someone you know. So maybe review or get reviewed by someone who doesn't know you at all. That way you can really read the paper from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the author, or what they've been working on. (Beause that is how a reader will be reading it.)
• From a native English speaker: The kind of feedback I got was usually grammar errors instead of actually helping to add to the depth of the paper.
• Note, though: this is evidence of needing to meet the reader where they are. A writer who uses English as a first language has tools to help find typos, and grammatical errors. A writer who is a ESL writer may need/want more comments on this type of thing.
• In general, though, don't waste your time on typos (unless the typos results in a word, that isn't the word they mean, like to, too, two. Spell check won't help with those as they ARE words!). These are "lower order" concerns in a draft. Focus mainly on "higher order concerns." 

• What are YOUR experiences with peer review? What kind of feedback did you get? What's worked? What hasn't? 

• Let's make a pact with one another.... 

REVISION VS. EDITING 

(Higher and Lower order concerns)

Peer review time! 

The facilitators for today did a GREAT job writing up questions to guide your reading of your colleagues' (and your OWN) papers. I've put them in a word file, so you can easily answer these questions for multiple papers.

The process:

• Step 1: Download this file, a questionnaire the facilitators developed (with just a bit of editing and packaging by me) and save it to the desktop. 
• Step 2: Go to somebody else's computer (preferably someone who sits far away from you.) There should be a draft, and a copy of the peer review questionnaire open.
• Step 3: Read, thoughtfully and carefully! You can use insert comment to embed comments in the draft, and write questions and feedback in the margin. Use the questionnaire as a guide to your reading. (I tried to segment it off intro different things, like questions about intro and thesis, questions about analysis of author, questions about the whole thing, etc. this may mean re-reading sections of the draft with different things in mind.) Remember, you can also write a note at the bottom of the paper. Sign your first name or initials to your comments and note (if any). Save. 
• Step 4:  Repeat steps 2 and 3! 
• Step 5: When you get back to your computer, go to the desktop. Print your feedback forms, or email them to yourself, or download them to your thumb drive. (Make sure to do that before you log off the computer, or they will be GONE.)

For next time:

• PF 1 is due!

• Your portfolio (including the reflective overview AND the rhetorical analysis) is due BEFORE YOUR CLASS on Tuesday, 10/2 Thursday 10/4 (You are welcome. Make good use of the time.) To turn it in: You will find a dropbox in Blackboard, linked from the left hand menu bar. Just attach the file/files. If Blackboard should go down for any reason, email me your attachments.

• Meeting place for Tuesday:

• We will NOT meet in our classroom on Tuesday. Instead, meet us in the library, in the reference training room (RTR) behind the reference desk.  

Heads up! New field trip information:

On Friday, October 5th, we'll head out for our field trip to National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame (Ft. Worth). We are booked for a 10 a.m. tour. Meet the bus by 8:45 am in the parking lot behind the TWU library. Feel free to pack breakfast and/or lunch to eat on the ride! (and you might want to bring a camera. It looks like there are some cool photo ops. The tour takes about 1.5 hours. We should be back, I would think, around 1ish.