You\u2019ve no doubt done plenty of peer reviews. But what percentage of the comments that you gave were actually addressed? You\u2019ll be happy\/dismayed to know that your peers almost always follow the correctives (pointing out errors). More substantial argumentative or rhetorical comments, on the other hand, are often ignored. Research<\/a> has affirmed this. If you write 50 comments pointing out style and grammar issues and 2 comments about the rhetorical or argumentative stance, the author will see it as a matter of scale and think the \u201cmistakes\u201d are more important than the comment that pointed out the massive logic error in the argument. It\u2019s obviously not just about the scale\u2014as writers, we all know that fixing a comma error is far easier than fixing that error in logic or a rhetorical oversight. In the end, however, a flawed argument is more problematic than a few comma errors.<\/p>\n This week, you will be reviewing your peers\u2019 Revisions. As experts in writing practices, you should understand a bit about what peer review comments work. Here are some things to recognize as you comment now and in the future.<\/p>\n First, here are the top four LEAST helpful comments:<\/p>\n The first two directly feed into #3\u2014lack of guidance. Whether a positive \u201cthis is good\u201d or a negative \u201cthis is bad,\u201d without pointing to a direct instance, and offering direct suggestion, the comment isn\u2019t very helpful. Offering suggestions can be hard. You have to shift from left brain analytical to right brain creative, and it can be taxing. As you could surmise from the above list, here are the top four MOST helpful comments:<\/p>\n What peer review ultimately does is allow an authentic reader to respond to a piece of writing. It\u2019s not about expert writing advice and \u201cfixing\u201d writers\u2014it\u2019s about responding how a reader would respond.<\/p>\n There are a lot of models for doing peer review including small-team collaborations, group review, and round robin style exchanges. Each has benefits. For the Revision and the Portfolio reviews, we are going to do collaborative reviews. What that means is that you are going to receive three reviews written on the same document, 1 from your professor and 2 from your peers. You will then have to decide what to do with these reviews (Module 9 is all about how to decide).<\/p>\n For the Revision assignment, you will be doing a mostly holistic peer review. It is holistic because you will read the works as a reader would, on the whole, and provide general impressions about what worked or didn\u2019t work. It is \u201cmostly\u201d because you should also look at the RGA (included at the end of each document) to make sure the authors emulated the genre markers they say they are in the Revision.<\/p>\n This week is all about reviewing your peers and figuring out what to do with their feedback.<\/p>\n Design this week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\n
How do you do a peer review?<\/h3>\n
\n