Learning Outcome #4 – Peer Review
Outcome: Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.
Frankly speaking, I distinctly remember having little enthusiasm for peer review. It often unsettled me, and I feared that my feedback might be perceived as critical rather than constructively helpful. I was mindful not to make my feedback too overt, recognizing that this would not be an advantageous input for my partner. Additionally, in high school, I constantly left peer review sessions with feedback that felt somewhat superficial. While this was acceptable at the time, I now appreciate how we are actively integrating our unique perspectives into our essays, which, in turn, enriches the feedback provided by our peers, making it more insightful and nuanced. With the guidance of Professor Brod’s course and the peer review framework, I have learned immensely and now feel vastly more confident in my peer editing capacity.
Work Sample 1. (Comments I left on Evan’s paper): The first two images depicted above display the insights I left on my third peer revision session, where I revised Evan’s paper. In the first stages of the year when my class was doing peer review, I was primarily concentrated and devoted to proposing local revisions, such as sentence-level adjustments. As the year progressed, my peer editing skills underwent significant refinement. I became adept not only at addressing local issues but also at simultaneously tackling global revisions, which consisted of higher levels of text. In improving my proficiency in local and global revisions, I learned how to balance the integration of my voice with the author’s in a cohesive manner throughout my essay. I also received notable feedback from Evan, emphasizing global revisions. By the end of the course, I had developed the ability to discern an appropriate balance between my voice and the author’s, and I gained a clearer understanding of the strategies I needed to employ to ensure that the statements I made were logically coherent and well-supported.
Work Sample 2. As previously mentioned, my skill in executing global revisions has evolved considerably over the course of each peer review. Over time, it has became increasingly natural to formulate a final comment pertaining the paper’s strengths and weaknesses. Actively partaking in peer review and providing sharp feedback to my peers helped me better understand my own writing when I improved my proficiency in local and global revisions, by making me learn how to balance the integration of my voice with the author’s in a cohesive manner throughout mine and my partner’s essay. By the end of the course, I had developed the ability to discern an appropriate balance between my voice and the author’s, and I gained a clearer understanding of the strategies I needed to employ to ensure that the statements I made were logically coherent and well-supported. As opposed to high school, my peer review experience has evolved and I am more tranquil when navigating peer revisions. I can see myself utilizing similar strategies in the future by equipping me for more professional health settings where I will talk to and care for a diverse set of individuals in the physical therapy workplace, as well as use some of my critical thinking and self-confidence skills I will have pursued in my peer editing workshops.
