What's the Point of WEx?
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).
"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.
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.)?
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| Peer Review Time! |
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! |
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.)?
I am a lazy, but meticulous writer. I despise doing multiple drafts, however I always review my work over the next few days after I finish writing it. I am willing to rewrite a paragraph multiple times, but I refuse to write over an entire new draft of my paper unless I am only a page or two in and I completely hate what I have written so far. I prefer to have people I know look over my essays that I trust to truly tell me the quality. I am optimistic about the WEx program and it seems like it should be an effective aid in improving my writing.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your idea. It is always annoying when you must review your own paper for a thousand times, then if there were some peers helping me doing it. That would be excellent for people like me who already get bored of reading my paper.
DeleteLazy/meticulous is a really interesting description.
DeleteI worry that I WEX will give me too much feedback and I will not know what direction to take my paper next. I am usually an overly polite peer reviewer. I do not like to give harsh feedback so I mostly would look for grammar and spelling mistakes. Receiving feedback has also been a tough process for me because I usually receive very broad direction and am not sure where to begin the process of revising. I will usually rewrite each paragraph in my paper three times and proofread them on my own.
ReplyDeleteSara Kodish
I completely agree with you. Generally I receive different opinions of feedback and become unsure in how to proceed and improve my paper while keeping my originality. When I peer review, I often try to just find grammatical errors, or point out where there are problems with the flow of sentences in a paragraphs.
Delete-Indira Guha
That is exactly what I am worrying about WEx. It is so awkward when different people giving you different suggestions and you do not know which is a more acceptable suggestion for your paper. Wondering and picking a really useful suggestion is just as hard as writing an excellent paper.
DeleteFeedback overload is definitely a real problem. In my MFA program, I got really overwhelmed by the workshop style of review which gave me 15+ opinions at once. Now, I keep feedback to 3-4 people at a time just to avoid that feeling.
DeleteWhat worries you about WEX? What worries me about WEx right now is the eight hour window I have for reviews. Personally, starting and finishing projects in the same day is something I tend to avoid at all costs because the cramming causes me to "stress-write", a.k.a. word-vomit. However, this is a hurdle I will surely overcome because if not now, eventually I'm going to have to learn to work within constrained and not long term deadlines.
ReplyDeleteWhat have your past experiences with peer review been, good or bad? As referenced in the blog, some people like to write reviews with the intention of tearing the other person apart. I have a lot of experience with being torn apart when having my writing looked over. However, I am not particularly worried about this for WEx because it is brought up so often how important it is to be constructive in the most polite way possible.
What does your revision process look like now (how many drafts do you write, do you have anyone look over your essays, etc.)? Right now, my revision process looks like writing out the topic for each of my paragraphs, reading through my work while taking notes under each heading, then going back and editing, rewriting, until I am satisfied. I am up for trying the revision process suggested by WEx because it could be a much more efficient process, who knows!
Kristin Stremlaw
You know you just have to do one review in the eight hour window, right? Like the idea is that WEx doesn’t want you to start a review, wander off without finishing, and then that student’s essay is in limbo and will never receive feedback. So whenever you create one review, you have eight hours to finish that one review before WEx throws it back for another student to review. You don’t have to complete all three reviews in eight hours.
DeleteUsually when I write papers I will create an outline with a general plan of the flow my paper will have and some points I want to highlight. From there, I start writing right way. From there, I use my outline to write my entire paper. I usually just flow write and then read over and edit when I am done. I usually just edit my initial paper, rather than writing multiple drafts. I think the use of WEx will be very helpful in forcing me to really look over my paper and do some powerful editing to improve the score I receive on my writing. However, I am worried that the comments I receive from WEx will not be helpful. All too often in the past when doing peer reviewing I received no comments back except for "it's so good!" and then I precede to get a grade less than I wanted. I am hopeful that the comments I receive in WEx are useful and I better not only my writing skills, but also my peer reviewing skills.
ReplyDeleteYeah, if a student just writes “so good” on their review of your paper, there aren’t going to get a very good WEx grade. Although we can’t make students provide a thorough review, the expectation for an A in WEx is to provide a healthy paragraph in each text box.
DeleteI am mostly worried about the feedback I give to people because I’m not really good at fixing other people’s work unless it is obvious that you did not meet certain requirements. I feel like the best person to look over your paper is the professor because they know what to look for and have the experience on finding what you are missing, but the last time I had someone do a peer review for me I received a lower grade than if I was to turn in my draft. I’m very skeptical of having people look over my work, but I do know it is a good thing because people can give you great feedback and see things you missed or reinforce you that you did the paper right the first time. My revision process looks like writing out ideas, writing a draft, reading over my draft to fix anything, double checking I meet the requirements, and turn in.
ReplyDeleteI generally don't find peer review very helpful except for spelling and grammatical mistakes. I think the professor, or whoever is creating the criteria, is generally the best to look over your paper. Sometimes, I feel as if the feedback of the peer reviews often end up changing the original point or voice of the paper.
Delete-Indira Guha
There really isn’t even a place for grammar/spelling errors in WEx because we’re looking for bigger picture feedback. I agree that having a professor look over rough drafts is a huge advantage, but the goal is to teach you all how to do that critical revision work yourselves since it’ll be rare to have a professor who will provide revision feedback on rough drafts + final drafts (sometimes they don’t even comment much on final drafts).
DeleteAfter finished learning WEx, I do not have any worry about WEx system, as it is the system that I expect on peer review. First of all, it is anonymous. So, people can avoid become too polite to give efficient advises. I had a bad experience about peer review. Because we give advises face to face, and everyone do not want to insult others, so that peer review does not help me a lot. Thus, I am happy to see the anonymous policy. Moreover, you can receive 3 opinions from different people, so it is easy for you to find out the significant problem in your paper. This characteristic also attracts me.
ReplyDeleteYukun Zheng
My past peer reviews were not going so great. A lot of the classmates weren't really pay attention on reading my paper throughly and gave meaningless advice. Some of them just gave an A and provided nothing. The same thing could happen to WEx review while peers still have the same attitude towards your essay. However, I do agree the process of reading and criticizing others' paper is the most productive procedure during this peer review session. Sometimes you can find a lot of problems that your essay could have by looking others' paper and reflect them on to you own paper.
ReplyDelete----------------Henry Huang
Yeah, WEx does not inoculate against lazy reviews, but it does require more than a general peer review so students tend to get better feedback (but not always).
DeleteIn the past, my peer reviewing experiences have not been very great. This is because a lot of my English teachers in high school were not very good. Because of this, people would not really care or try in the class. Nobody really put much effort into the reviews besides circling and underlining random things and the writing 'good job' at the top. Since none of that was very helpful, the entire writing process was really up to me. I usually like to write a rough outline of what's going on and then write a draft from there. From there, I continually edit that draft until it is where I want it. I actually really like the WEx review process because I feel that I am more willing to leave certain comments or ideas of constructive criticism if I don't have to tell the person to their face. I don't know if that's the best thing necessarily but I think that this review process will be very beneficial for me.
ReplyDelete- Emma Lorenzo
Yeah, I had a really unchallenging high school English experience also.
DeleteHess.530
ReplyDeleteOften in high school peer editing was not taken very serious. Therefore, it was ineffective in improving the writing process. However, I find WEx to more productive compared to other methods of peer editing. The structured approach and set guidelines provides a standard for the other review your writing. Additionally, I like that multiple people review your writing. I dislike that there is such a strict time frame to submit responses on WEx. Overall, WEx is an adequate peer review platform.
Yeah, the strict time frame is annoying for everyone, but the system can’t function without the windows.
DeleteI don't think the peer review process is always helpful. For example, I once had reviews pointing out the strong points of my paper, only to have my teacher say those points needed improvement. My past experiences for peer review have been somewhat unsatisfying. In a class I took last semester, we had to do peer reviews anonymously and the comments I received simply told me about what I did well on, but not what I should improve on. When it comes to peer review, I know a lot of us worry that we're being too harsh with criticism, so now I just send my papers to my best friends because they're not afraid to tell me what's terrible with it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it’s helpful to think of peer review not just from the perspective of receiving feedback but also learning through giving feedback. That critique can help you see gaps in your own writing, and I think can be more valuable than the peer feedback.
DeleteI personally think that having someone peer edit my essays is extremely helpful. In high school, I always asked my sister or my classmates read my essay and give some constructive criticism. I find that people who have never seen the text before catch a lot of glaring errors that I missed. I'm still not very familiar with WEx yet but once I'm used to the website, I believe it will be a great resource to have. As far as my current revision process, I usually just write the entire paper in one or two sittings then come back to it another day to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. I don't really revise it more than one or two times which is something I'm looking to change.
ReplyDeleteA worry that I have with WEX is the issue with copying and pasting our prompts into the text box. When doing the initial assignment where we were to just copy and paste the already provided text, there was issues with the pasted text. It did not initially work out because the text was not showing properly, which caused me to almost submit the assignment late.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, peer review was a hit or miss depending on who was able to review my paper. Sometimes well versed writers were able to review my papers and provide extremely helpful feedback, but there were also those that did not care enough to provide actual feedback and wasted time.
The revision process for me is correcting any comments or concerns first. Then when I finish the corrections, I go back to read to analyze the flow and structure my paper has to ensure that it is still readable.
If your text looks strange, please let me know. Sometimes WEx can glitch with the submissions, but we can figure something out.
DeleteI worry that I can not give a good feedback to my classmates and the eight hours window to submit my feedback. I think it is great to have someone to look at my paper because I can know where should I improve and make my writing even better. My revision process is write down the main idea and write down the draft, after that I will read my paper couple more times until I think it reach the requirement and I had express the main idea that I wanted to talk about.
ReplyDelete—Peter Tou
Remember it’s eight hours to finish ONE review. Once you create a review, you have to finish it in eight hours. You don’t have to finish all three reviews within eight hours.
DeleteWhat worries me about WEx is the feedback I will get from other students. I am worried that students will give me too much feedback, or point me in many directions. I would rather go in one direction and have many points to it rather than going in many different directions with the one topic. Peer reviews have always been a hit or miss with me. Many times i have gotten no feedback from students and other times I have gotten too much feedback which leads me to many different directions. There have also been times when the reader didn't understand what I was trying to say at all. My revision process is always different, but I always start off with an outline. Once my outline is ready, I write my introduction and have someone always check that. Once I have a few paragraphs complete, I have someone read it up to there to make sure I am going in the direction I want to. When I am completely done I have someone check it again once more for any additional feedback or suggestions!
ReplyDelete-Vidhi Daga
I think the WEX can help me to improve my writing because with peer review I can know how other people think of my essay and they can offer me some helpful feedbacks. Although some advice is not so pertinent for me, it can still remind me which points I need to notice.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in my opinion, peer review is not enough for me to help my writing since even though some peers' writing is quite good, I still hope I can get some instruction from instructor. Besides, too much different comments about the essay may make me puzzled and sometimes will mislead me.
As you covered in the post, my main fear with WEx is that the feedback I get won't be constructive. I've never had trouble with writing, but I value constructive criticism on my papers since there could be some error that I completely overlook. In terms of my revision process, I usually only write 1 draft and then the final paper.
ReplyDelete-- Parker Spielvogel
What worries me about WEx right now is that it gives me only 8 hours to complete my entire assignment. I am somebody who writes in intervals as writing is not something what I really like. And writing everything at the same time is very difficult for me. Also the 3 o clock deadline which actually is there for all English assignments is what I am really concerned about.
ReplyDeleteI do not have any experience with doing the peer review and this is the first time I am doing that.
Right now, my revision process looks like writing out the gist for each of my paragraphs before , then going back and writing, rewriting and then asking my friend to read my work and then work on her suggestion.
It’s eight hours per review, not eight hours for all three reviews. Once you create a review, you have eight hours to finish that one review.
DeleteLihuang Zhang
ReplyDeleteI am worried that we only have eight hours to accomplish our assignment of review. Also, the classes I had is far from my apartment. I should start the writing after I took all the classes. However, if I start writing after seven o'clock, I cannot make most of these eight hours. Therefore, I worried that some ideas could not be presented in the articles. About peer review, I think this is a good method to improve my writing ability. I can read some complete articles and learn from them. Also, I can receive many suggestions and comments. From the review, I know the deficiencies of my article and the advantages that should be preserved. For revision, I like to check the article after I have written. I would check whether the logic and emotion are clear and rational. In addition, I often talk with my friend about my articles and his articles, and we can share some great ideas. Then, I can have a better writing.
zhang.8657
It’s eight hours per review, not eight hours for all three reviews. Once you create a review, you have eight hours to finish that one review.
DeleteThe only thing that worries me about WEx is the 8 hour time frame we have to complete the assignment. I could combat this a bit with the learning module because I already had the paper to review, but I will not be able to do this with the PSA or other assignments. I am sure I will be able to complete it, but I will have to schedule a time that I would for sure be able to do it! Other than that, I absolutely love what WEx does! I think it is an amazing process, and I am excited to use it in the future.
ReplyDeleteMy experience with peer reviews in the past have been horrible, basically all in high school. Other students would not care, and would just write things down. Half of the time, I had to have the teacher peer review my paper because no one else would give me any feedback except “It’s great!” just to get the grade. I would review 3 or 4 other assignments, and only get one in return. So, before WEx, I despised the words “peer review”, but now it excites me.
My revision process includes a draft, that I read over and edit in any way, then I check the prompt and see if I answered it in my paper. If I did, then I usually just add or subtract from the draft and make it my final paper; but, if I think I did not answer the question, I will rewrite it, maybe taking a few points from my draft.
-Miqaela Weller
It’s eight hours per review, not eight hours for all three reviews. Once you create a review, you have eight hours to finish that one review.
DeleteI have done peer review face to face and in other classes I found that it is very helpful in updating and refining the draft because we can discuss the comments we gave to each other. So we can understand the comments much better and argue about something in the draft more efficiently. However, in WEx, I don't know can I understand all of the reviews well and I might be lost if I receive too much different reviews that lead me to different directions. On the other hand, the WEx does offer us a really convenient platform for doing peer review and I think this is a good way for us to improve our writing and receiving many kinds of different suggestions and ideas to help us develop further expansion of research.
ReplyDeleteI have done a peer review in the past and I lost a lot of marks reviewing one of my peers paper mainly because the paper was so out of context that it didn't match or meet any of the criterion. It was so bad that the only feedback I could give was to erase everything and just redo the essay. It was impossible for me to even give it a grade score. So this is what i'm worry about.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I’ve had to give that advice before and it’s not fun.
DeleteIn the past I didn't get many useful information in peer review becausepeople in my group were always silent. Actually l'm really interesting in WEx because it gave people enough time to read and directions to analyze. I did peer review in another environment class but it didn't help at all.
ReplyDeleteyanan zhang
I worry that when the WEX gives me feedback and I might be confused. I think the viewer may have different approach to my article and it can be so different that I do not know who to listen to. I usually give comment that are neutral and not harsh feedback. I always state my opinion based on fact which I find in the text and do not predict what author thinks. It makes me feel bad when I give people low mark. Peer review can be helpful way to check work, but in my high school, there is only few peer review and people do not take it seriously. I always reread each paragraph in my paper and always check word choice during writing to improve my paper.
ReplyDeleteFeifan Wang
ReplyDeleteFor me i am worried that i will receive feedback of opposite directions and i don't know which feedback is more useful for me to improve my paper. And i am not sure if my feed back is useful for others. In the past, my feedback is not bad and i think my feedbacks have gave others some helpful advices. My process is that i will take a look at the whole page, then i will look at separate paragraphs. I will check if the connection between paragraphs is smooth or not .And i will see if each paragraph is for specific goal.
Feifan Wang
What does your revision process look like now? Currently, my revision process consists of using my brother as a review source, typically after completing a first draft. This has proven to be an extremely effective tool because, due to our relationship, I do not have to worry about him pulling any punches and I can rely on him to do a thorough analysis. As a college student himself, his insight is critical and informative, and is typically my go to when it comes to important pieces,
ReplyDeleteHa, my brother, who is a freshman at IU, calls me for grammar questions and the occasional full comments edit. It can be nice to have someone you’re close with just tell it to you straight.
DeleteWhat worries me about WEx is me not understand how to use it etc and worrying that by me not being a good writer and providing a bad feedback. My worst fear is giving someone who has done extremely well with their essay a bad feedback and I don't want to be seen as that guy who grades terribly.
ReplyDeleteMy past experience with peer review is exactly like what you have wrote above. I would always have friends grade my paper and give me a good grade or a teacher would assign me randomly with a partner and the new partner tears my paper apart for with the smallest error (which is a good thing to become a good writer but it hurts my ego knowing that I made a mistake).
My revision process now is just fixing the errors my partner pointed out since I'm not really a good writer myself and wouldn't really know where else to improve besides fixing errors that was pointed out for me. I would have to at least write about 2 drafts or so to get a good grade and a somewhat polished paper.
I love reading other people's essay and seeing the type of writing style they use and if I feel that it's good, coherent, and logical, then I copy that type of writing style and incorporate that into my writing style. I personally don't like grading other people's essay because I'm a bad writer myself and I don't want to give feedback on something I'm bad with because it would make me look like a joke honestly compared to good writers in class with their good feedbacks.
I would definitely try to think beyond errors (like grammatical issues). Because while a clean, well-written paper is important, the ideas, concepts, and analysis are what our peer review is focused on. You can always run your paper through Grammarly, but to become a strong writer means more than just knowing how to avoid comma splices.
DeleteMy current revision process includes several drafts and both looking over my essays myself and having 1-3 other people look at my essays. For all of my college and Scholarship essays specifically, I would write my first draft myself unaided. Then, I would go over it myself and fix areas of bad phrasing, hidden meanings or grammatical errors. Finally, I would then show the edited draft I had revised myself to my mother or a friend or my sister, a creative writing student, to have them put input on phrases that needed to be revised or parts that needed to be cut out or just run-on sentences that needed to be altered. From there I would go and edit the parts they instructed me on and return to them the final product to be checked at least one more time before submission.
ReplyDeleteCan whoever wrote this comment sign their name? Thanks!
DeleteCadmon
ReplyDeleteMy only worries about WEx is simply the fact that I am just new to it. I have always done a peer review, or have someone check my paper in person, and generally with me there to see if I made any errors. WEx is simply a platform I will have to adjust to. I would say in the past, I have had generally good peer reviews, which is probably due to the fact that I knew my reviewer and trusted them to give me good honest reviews back. The only problem I have with peer reviews is the chance of being given a worse advise or suggestion that could hurt my paper. When it comes to writing my papers, I generally start with a rough idea, and just put it on paper, then go back and re-read if then make edits to it continuously. After my edits I correct and make sure the structure and the information within my paper is well organized and flows appropriately.
My worry is I have trouble giving appropriate reviews since I cannot express my opinions very well. The whole WEx website is a god place for me to practice writing where I can receive from other writers. When I do peer reviews in my past class, I found someone just give a perfect on every peers' paper they supposed to give specific comments. I got the same worry that whether I could receive a critical review or not.
ReplyDeleteRight now my revision process looks like after I reading all the reviews, I will try to agree and disagree with them first. And then I will rewrite my paper many times as it goes to my expectation.
---Duoyuan Wang
A worry I have about WEx is trying to keep up with all the different revisions that multiple people are giving me. I worry that I will get multiple comments on my writing and I will get confused about what direction to take my paper when multiple peer reviews offer different ideas. When revising my paper, I try to take into account all feedback, so it might become difficult to take all feedback if the ideas suggest different ways to take the paper. Another worry I have is that I tend to be too polite when it comes to peer review. I mainly just look over spelling or simple grammar errors because I do not want to give the writer of the paper bad advice and cause them a bad grade. However, I understand that I need to start to give more in depth advice and I plan on trying to improve throughout the WEx process.
ReplyDelete-Nicholas Durstock
When crafting a piece of writing, I usually stick to one draft and work to shape and rearrange things from there. I know a lot of writers my age completely start over when writing a long paper, but for some reason I have no intentions of doing that and doing so would only give me more stress and a shorter time to achieve my goals. In high school, I would always have my best friend read through my work because she loves to write papers, fix grammar errors, and give positive feedback to help me communicate my ideas. In addition to, my English teacher always allowed her students to share our work with her before the due date in order to receive feedback from her point of view. I always made sure to do this because if she is going to be grading it in a few days, her critiques are vital to fix in order to score a higher grade.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI'm not a good website user, so I often misunderstanding the instructions of WEx. I'm very worry about my WEx in this semester. I understand that WEx is a very well-managed website for students to improve their ability of reviewing and writing. However, for the processes of posting and review comments which make me confuse at first. Thanks for the instructor's explanations and patients.
I think my review process is in stuck because I submit less than 3 reviews, and I'm a little concerned whether following steps I could still follow up and finishing or not.
For the peer reviews I did before, our strategies of reviewing the articles are always unmanageable. So sometimes group mates are not very sure what we should reviewing and after looking the structures and grammars. From, the instructions of WEx, I learned a lot what should I write on the reviewing.
Siyuan Zhang
The hardest part for me about WEx is having to adhere to certain criteria while reviewing papers. I understand that the program is designed to force students to engage in a higher level of thinking, but I do not enjoy analyzing writing, period. I would rather review grammar and sentence structure than critique the effectiveness of someone’s argument. I love getting feedback on my writing; giving it is the hard part for me.
ReplyDelete- Sarah Khoury
Yeah, grammar/sentence structure can be a lot easier to focus on because that’s about concrete rules.
Delete
ReplyDeleteI honestly worry about how brutal some of the people will be. In the past, I typically had a friend review my essay and look over it. Drafts on the other hand was always something I typically didn't do, well ayleast not separate documents. I would just edit my essay as I went kinda like a "live" draft. It worked well for me back then but I feel as if this is something I shouldn't repeat now.
-Victor Caraballo
Yikes, hopefully brutality will be kept to a minimum. (If not and it’s from one of my students, I follow up letting them know their tone was too harsh).
DeleteIn the past, most of the peer reviews that I received were useless, it looks like they didn't read my papers not carefully, but I also received some helpful suggestions from peer review. One thing that I worried about is how to give others review. Because I am not good at finding problems in one paper, and I am afraid that I will give others useless suggestions. I often re-write my paper 3 times, based on peer review, instructors' suggestions and studying writing skills from peers' papers.
ReplyDeleteHuaijin Yang
My main worries with WEX are my own reviewing skills. I tend to believe things are better than they are while reading over them and miss important details that I should expect to be in the essay. My past experiences with peer review have been mixed. In classes where I've been forced to do peer review it just comes off as awkward and forced. I'll give them my thoughts, but feel like it's tougher to have a conversation with them over what they could have done better. For this reason I just have friends who may know something or be interested in the topic read over it and ask what they think. Typically, I get more honest answers out of them and they don't feel bad pointing out my typical dumb mistakes. After this I go through fix my mistakes, read through it again, and fix from their. It typically works out well for me.
ReplyDeleteBrad Knez
One thing that I'm worrying about WEx is sometimes I feel different to write enough length of comments to the article I review about. And also when I describe the article, I would worry about if I write too many details, it would become plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteYunjie Shi
What worries me most about Wex is my ability to fully critique others work in a helpful way. I am usually a very kind person, and I am not that great at English. Because I am not good in the subject, I worry about giving my advice to others. I would rather be kind and tell someone they are doing a great job, than tell them to fix everything when they actually may have had an already good paper. My past experiences with peer review in high school were usually unhelpful because none of us wanted to say that the writer had a bad paper. Now on Wex, I have had both good and bad peer reviews. A good review had nice constructive criticism and had told me I was not focused on a specific topic. A bad review told me everything was great and there was nothing for me to really change. My revision process now starts off with me writing a rough draft. After someone has peer reviewed my paper, I go back into the rough draft and fix what they said I needed to. Then I usually have someone else review the final paper, and if there are any mistakes, I go back in and fix it. Then I will have the teacher review my paper and tell me if it is okay to submit or not. If it isn't, sometimes I will rewrite the whole paper and start from the beginning. If it is alright, I will go ahead and submit it.
ReplyDelete^Written by Alexa Marshall
DeleteWhat worries me about WEx right now is that it gives me only very limited hours to complete my entire assignment and reviews. Once time is up, the windows are closed which drives me a bit crazy. Also, I don't complete three reviews with 3 questions of each at one time is a great idea because the quality of each review is hard to guaranteed. My peer reviews were mostly not very good. I just found that most of the reviews are very subjective without detailed explanation. Also, people raise various ideas and I do not know which direction is perfect to go in depth. I've written couple pieces of papers and have some of my classmates do the review. Now I expect to write and receive reviews with good quality but not the quantity.
ReplyDeleteDrives me a little crazy, too, but the windows have to exist for the program to work.
DeleteI worry that I can not give a good feedback to my classmates and the eight hours window to submit my feedback. I think it is great to have someone to look at my paper because I can know where should I improve and make my writing even better. My revision process is write down the main idea and write down the draft, after that I will read my paper couple more times until I think it reach the requirement and I had express the main idea that I wanted to talk about.
ReplyDeleteIt’s eight hours per review, not eight hours for all three reviews. Once you create a review, you have eight hours to finish that one review.
DeleteI have the peer review experience before when I was having the ESL 1902 class. The experience is not so good at that time, because I think the suggestions my classmates gives is too general. This is also what I worried about the peer review this time. I hope I can give my classmates specific and helpful suggestions.
ReplyDeleteWith the criteria, WEx feedback tends to be more focused.
DeleteThat’s a great method (giving yourself a break from your writing).
ReplyDeleteIt’s eight hours per review, not eight hours for all three reviews. Once you create a review, you have eight hours to finish that one review.
ReplyDelete