Peer Review Workshop and Submission

Peer Review and Submission of Text from your Article

This workshop consists on two parts. The first part is to review the tips and directions for proofing your own article and peer reviewing 2 articles from other students. You must submit an article for review in order to be assigned articles for peer review. In order to earn credit you must both submit and complete 2 reviews. Here is how it works:

1. Review the workshop portion below.
2. Complete a draft of JUST THE TEXT (no video or graphics) of your article. You may put place holders in such as [insert video/photo/graphic here] as a word document by the deadline.
3. Once you have submitted a draft you will be assigned 2 peers to review (notified by 6 am the next morning).
4. See the links and video at the bottom of this workshop for how to conduct a peer review on Canvas.
5. Reviews are conducted by (at the minimum) filling out the rubric with your comments and assigning a point value. THIS IS NOT A GRADE AND WILL NOT USED TO ASSIGN POINTS, but a quantitative assessment on a 10 point scale (see below).
6. Reviews are due by April 13 - but I HIGHLY recommend you you complete them ASAP.
7. Use this feedback to improve your own work as well as gauge the work of your peers in comparison to your own.

Scale

Tips for Proofing your own Writing

1. Listen to your word processor, it is not always right but investigate anything that is underlined by a red or green line.

2. Your word processor will not catch everything. Remember, autocorrect/autofill is your frenemy. Carefully proof your own work.

3. Read your paper out loud (not in your head). This will catch many mistakes and will also help you establish good “flow” in your work. A sentence that does not make sense or is confused will be easier to catch if you try and speak it. It is also good at catching those autocorrect “public/pubic” type mistakes.

 Brad H. (Sp. 2012) recalled an instructor at Ohlone College stating that communication is “10% what is actually said, and 90% what is understood.”

Words, terms, and phases are meaning (in the technical sense) as they are defined and meaning (in the personal sense) as they are interpreted. For both the writer and the reader, the information and context of writing is largely in these associations. In a sense, all writing is “hyperlinked” to data that is stored in our brains. For the writer this can be an problem because a sentence or statement in the text may “make sense” to the writer, but the reader (who does not have access to that stored knowledge) is left wondering what the reader is trying to say. For the reader, it can complicate understanding because the reader will layer in meaning and content that may not be there.  

Create a Proofing Sheet

It is hard to remember a lot of the rules and conventions of writing. A great way to proof your papers is to create a "Proofing Sheet" that you can use to check for errors. Remember, writing is mostly rewriting. This way you do not have to remember everything, you just need to check when you edit. After a while, you will just remember the rule. For example:

Quotes

• Punctuation goes inside quotes
• Colons, semicolons, exclamation points, and question marks go outside the quotation marks if they do not belong to the quotation
• Quotes cannot stand alone but must be part of a sentence (eg. Coopman states ".....")
• A colon should be used when quoting something longer than one sentence

Common Issues

• Forms of be: to be, have, being, that. Use active voice so more doing than being. Go through and try to eliminate any and all forms of be if you can.
• Do not tell me what you are going to do, just do it.
• Watch redundancies and repetition: you always “think to yourself” so rather “I thought.” Once you have told us you are a SJSU student, you do not need to include that, “a student” is fine. Rather than “During my high school years” simply “During high school.”
• Most papers needed organizational work, so outlining might help here. Think how a movie can be build – chronologically, flash back, retrospective, etc.
• Also, paragraphs are your friends - use them. Think of them as content containers, group like content in them.
• Use shorter sentences with clear subjects. A good rule is one comma per sentence max.

Peer Review

Peer reviewing papers is simply like looking over an assignment for a friend, but more structured. The idea is that a different “set of eyes” often catches errors or sees problems that we may miss. After looking at the same text for a while we often do not “see” what is there, but what we think is there. Moreover, humans have a tendency to “annotate” reality by attaching it (like a hyperlink) to information that is in our brains. Writing can be like that in the sense that we think a sentence is clear, but it is only clear if that information is attached to the “file” in your brain.

Constructive criticism is key in evaluating your own work as well as others. Reviewing others work will improve your ability to review your own. You are helping your peer, doing him/her a favor by catching issues that she/he can then fix, thus earning a better grade. Here are some guidelines on what to check for:

1. Do not be afraid to mark the paper up – clearly print, draw arrows, whatever is needed.
2. Technical issues: spelling, grammar or other issues, also if the peer followed directions. Keep the directions handy so you can double check.
3. Word choices: do the words use fit the apparent meaning of the sentence? Would another word be better/clearer? What about slang or jargon – is the meaning explained, does it contribute to the goal of the essay?
4. Sense and flow. Does it make sense? How is the pacing? Do you understand what the author is saying/trying to say? Is the “point” clear to you?
5. Organization: does the essay have a good clear organization structure? Is the argument laid out in a clear, coherent, and organized fashion?
6. Is it clear and concise? Are there excess words or sentences? Are there too many qualifiers, pointless commentary, editorializing, or asides? Are there examples that do fit or even work against the stance of the paper? Is it redundant, repeats itself over and over, says things again and again….

Peer Review In Canvas

What is a peer review Assignment?

How do I know if I have a peer review to complete?

Where can I find my peers' feedback for peer reviewed assignments? 

How do I submit a peer review to an Assignment?