BCP Feedback Team Peer Review

 

Peer Review & Feedback Goals

Your goal in providing feedback during peer review is to be helpful to your feedback team members.

Areas of Focus for Peer Review

things you should look for, identify issues, offer suggestions for improvement
achievement of purpose & effective communication to specific audience/s
genre appropriateness and conventions & effective organization
reader centered writing (you view, positive emphasis, and reader benefits)
professional writing style (clarity, conciseness, and parallelism)

Areas Excluded From Peer Review

things you should ignore; do not comment on as part of peer review
Do not comment on grammar errors, spelling errors, punctuation errors, and typographical errors. Do not copyedit peers’ texts for surface level error.

Pre-Review Preparation

before you review a peer’s correspondence draft (the draft of their letter, email, or memo)
1: Download Peers’ Files:

Go to your Group > Feedback Team > Discussion Board forum titled “Positive/Neutral/Informational PAGOS & Correspondence Draft Exchange” and download your peers’ files.

  • Note to Teams D, E, F, and G in Section 008: Each team member should conduct peer reviews on 2 other students. Assuming all 4 team members uploaded draft files:
    • Michael — review Dwight and Jim
    • Dwight — review Jim and Pam
    • Jim — review Pam and Michael
    • Pam — review Michael and Dwight
  • If a group member hasn’t submitted their file, they will not get a peer review. Students who can only conduct one peer review will not be penalized.
2: Prepare for Review (things to do before you comment on a peer’s correspondence draft):

Understand the Scenario: Giving feedback on the author’s text means understanding the scenario—the specific situation the author is in, their purpose, and their audience. This mean you should know/understand the author’s scenario text as well as the author. Read the scenario text a couple of times. Think through a PAGOS plan in your head before reading over the author’s PAGOS plan.

Review the PAGOS Plan: Read the PAGOS plan to understand your peer’s approach to the rhetorical situation. If the PAGOS plan looks thorough enough, move on. You should only comment on the PAGOS plan if you believe there’s something the author didn’t consider or misinterpreted. something that doesn’t see.

Read & Re-Read the Correspondence Draft: Read the author’s correspondence draft at least three times without making notes, comments, or annotations. Read to understand the text—understand what’s happening in the text, understand the authors approach and strategy toward achieving the purpose, communicating to the specific audience of the correspondence, etc.

The Review

broadly, highlight areas for improvement in reader-centered writing and professional writing style and provide feedback
3: Identify (Highlight) Areas for Improvements

to Improve Reader-Centered Writing: In one color, highlight words, phrases (and sentences, if needed) that present opportunities to improve reader-centered writing, including you view, positive emphasis, and reader benefits.

To Professional Writing Style: In a second color, highlight words, phrases (and sentences, if needed) that present opportunities to improve professional writing style, including clarity, conciseness, and parallelism.

Additional Info:
  • at the least, your highlighting should differentiate between reader-centered writing issues and professional writing style issues; in other words, you must use two different colors—one color for RCW issues and a different color for PWS issues
  • depending on the number and/or categories of issues you see, consider using more than two colors and a key indicating what the colors mean (for example, RCW issues in yellow, clarity issues in green, and conciseness issues in purple)
  • you don’t need to correct or suggest improvements in these instances, but consider using marginal or interlinear comments if you need to provide clarification, ask a question, etc.
4: Provide Feedback in Marginal and/or End Comments:
Find information on using the “comments” feature of your word processing application: in Word (Mac), in Word (PC), in Google Docs, in Pages (if those links don’t work for you, Google search to find instructions).
Use “Comments”; do not use “Track Changes.”
If using Google Docs or Pages, be sure you can export, save, or convert the word processing files back to .docx format (and make sure the comments show up in the converted file)
reminder: FAU provides Microsoft 365 to students at no cost (you can get the latest version of Word for Mac or PC)

Comment—in the margins and at the end. When I review colleagues texts, student texts, or professional texts, I use a balance of marginal and end comments. Sometimes it’s more marginal and less end, and other times it’s more end and less marginal.There’s no rule about how many marginal comments you should use vs. how many end comments. There’s no rule for how much you should write for one or the other.Do whatever works for you. Do whatever allows you to be the most helpful to the author. Do whatever allows you to point out and explain areas/elements/ideas the author could improve. Do whatever is most clear and understandable.

In general, your primary focus should be on purpose and audience. Your secondary focus should be on genre, organization, and style.

When I assess your peer reviews, I’m not counting words of feedback, numbers of highlights, or length of marginal/end comments. I’m looking to see if your review is helpful to the author.

If you’re really struggling, you can go through the list of questions/prompts below. It’s not required (and not really necessary to treat the questions/prompts like a worksheet or fill-in-the-blank, but it’s there if you need help). If there’s an area where the author needs to make improvements, then write some feedback (in the margins AND/OR in end comments—whatever works best). If an area is great or the author did a thing well—if something doesn’t need any comment—skip it.

Optional Questions/Prompts for Peer Review

you don’t have to use the questions below—but people usually want a worksheet or a fill-in-the-blank—so it’s there if you need it
PURPOSE
  • What is the author’s primary purpose? (what does the author want to accomplish? What does the author want to have happen as a result of this correspondence?)
  • Is that purpose appropriate?
  • Would this correspondence accomplish the author’s purpose? (would what the author wans to have happen actually happen? Is the purpose evident from the correspondence?
  • Does the correspondence include all of the necessary information required to accomplish its purpose? Is the information clear and accurate? Is the text that contains the purpose included in the right place (dependent on genre and purpose –good/neutral news, bad news, or persuasive)?
AUDIENCE
  • Does the author’s text consider the audience?
  • Does it speak to what the audience cares about or values? In their language?
  • Does the text include what the audience wants/needs to know?
  • Does the text meet the audience’s expectations?
  • Does the text meet the needs of the audience’s context, physical environment; how the reader will receive/read the text?
  • Does the text include reader benefit(s)? and (as needed), does it speak to potential objections?
GENRE
  • Is the genre (memo, email, letter) appropriate for the situation, the audience, and achieving the purpose?
  • Is the genre the author chose the best genre for this situation?
  • Has the author followed the rules (observed the conventions) of the genre?
ORGANIZATION
  • How has the author organized?
  • Is the broad organizational approach (direct or indirect) appropriate for the purpose, audience, and context?
  • Is all the information in a logical order? Is like information kept together in “chunks”?
STYLE
  • reader-centered writing: you-view, positive emphasis, reader benefits
  • professional writing style: clarity, conciseness, parallelism
  • Broadly, is the authors tone and style appropriate?
  • Do they use lists, headings, bold, etc. well?

Submission Instructions

submit TWO places: 1) to your group’s discussion board and 2) upload to the Canvas assignment area

When you are done, please save each file as “ReviewerLastName-for-AuthorLastName-PNI.docx.”

So, if I were peer reviewing Sally Smith’s draft and John Jacobs draft, I would name my files “Mason-for-Smith-PNI.docx” and Mason-for-Jacobs-PNI.docx.”

You need to submit both review files to TWO places:

  1. Submit Feedback to the Authors: go to Group > Feedback Team > Discussion Board forum titled “Positive/Neutral/Informational PAGOS & Correspondence Draft Exchange.” Reply to the forum post and attach the files.
  2. Submit to the Professor: go to the “PNI Feedback” assignment area and upload both review files. (instructions on how to submit multiple files to one Canvas assignment area)

Submit—to your group’s discussion board AND to the assignment area—by 11:59pm on Friday, September 25th.

Review & Comments Examples

Example Comments on Toby’s Correspondence Draft

Peer Reviews: “What Ifs” and Qs & As

Q. What if one of my team members didn’t submit a draft for peer review?

A. If a group member didn’t submit a file, they won’t get a peer review.

Q. Only one of my team members submitted a draft—will I be penalized if I can only do one peer review?

A. No. You will not be penalized if you can only do one peer review.

Q. One of my team member’s files is missing parts. What should I do?

A. It depends.

If your peer’s file is missing the scenario text (I asked everyone to copy and paste it at the top), then use the link on the Course Schedule to go to the BCP Project Outline; click on the scenario title to read the scenario.

If your peer’s file is missing the PAGOS plan, then just complete the peer review on the correspondence draft. (you could also point out to your group member that since their PAGOS is missing, you can only review what you have)

If your peer’s file is missing the correspondence draft, maybe take a closer look at the PAGOS plan, provide a few comments/feedback where you can, and you’re done. (you could also point out to your group member that since their correspondence draft was missing, you could only give feedback on the PAGOS plan.

In general, do the best you can to review what you have.

Q. One of my team member’s files is missing something, so I can’t do a full peer review. Will I be penalized?

A. Who hurt you? Seriously. I want the name of the professor who hurt you.

Of course not. I wouldn’t penalize you for someone else’s error.

Q. What if one of my team members submitted their draft late? Should I still complete a peer review for them?

A. The draft files were due at 11:59pm on Tuesday, 9/22 (with a grace period until 2:00am). So, if your group member submitted their draft to the discussion board after 2:00am on Wednesday 9/23, technically, you don’t have to do a peer review.

But depending on the circumstances, you probably should still do one.

Hypothetical #1: Your group member submitted their draft at 2:15am on 9/23 (10 minutes after the grace period). Are you required to give them a peer review? No. Should you give them a peer review? Yes, of course you should.

Hypothetical #2: Your group member submitted their draft at 11:30pm on Wednesday, 9/23 (almost 24 hours after the deadline). Are you required to give them a peer review? No. Should you give them a peer review? If the file was there went you went to download it, then you should probably do a peer review.

Hypothetical #3: Your group member submitted their draft at 12:00pm (noon) on Friday, 9/25 (waaaay late). You already did a review for one group member who submitted a file, and there’s only 12 hours until the peer reviews are due. You have other work today, and you have plans to make dinner and watch a movie tonight with your sister. Should you do the peer review? Heck no.

Here’s the bottom line: If a group member submitted her or his draft late (after 2am on 9/23), technically, you aren’t required to review it. However, if—depending on how late it was and your own schedule—it’s still reasonable for you to review it, you should.

Q. What if one of my team member’s drafts is really good?

A. Prove it.

In my experience, student peer reviewers in this class (ENC 3213) who write little more than “Great job!” at the end of an author’s text is usually just being lazy.

In my experience, students correspondence drafts need a lot of work.

But, perhaps you’ve read one of your peer’s drafts and it’s really good. Perhaps there are only a few minor things to improve.

If that’s the case, instead of identifying issues and offering suggestions purpose and audience, then write a few sentences about why the author’s text would accomplish its purpose, and briefly discuss the ways the text is effective in communicating to the specific audience. Write a sentence about why the subject line is effective (if it has one), and/or explain why the organization is effective for the context. Say something about the use of reader-centered writing and great professional writing style (how is it reader centered? where and how is it clear and concise?