One objective I’ve made substantial progress in is “ Improve at working with others during the writing process (sharing ideas, giving feedback, etc)”. Peer reviews are always in class, and ample time is used so thorough reading is done. Furthermore, Professor Rodwell double-checks the feedback to confirm whether all the feedback is sensible and useful. In high school, crappier versions of peer review were easily accepted. You could write “explain more”, and that’d be okay, simply because it got the message across. But it didn’t point to a particular part of the writing where the details were lacking. In reality, it wasn’t effective. In college, your not only held to a higher level, but you are taught how to get there. My feedback went from vague satisfactory points and unconstructive constructive criticism to detailed criticism, but actually usable. It’s also seen when I get peer review from others, as it makes sense, and it points out specific parts where I could improve, or even keep if it’s really good. I remember all the times in high school where I’d be scratching my head looking at the phrase “good”, or “why?”. The peer review I now get is much more helpful, and it allows me to see a standard for peer reviewing that I can attain and stick to. It’s especially helped when I wrote some unsatisfying first drafts (at least in my opinion), where I could resort to the help of both my professor and my classmates and get good feedback to improve and turn my essays from mediocre to good.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.