WIC Learning Lunch: Friday April 25, 2014

Hybrid and Online Peer WorkshopSome Ideas for Peer WorkshopFor Campus, Hybrid, and Ecampus Classes WIC Learning Lunch: Friday April 25, 2014

Terminology Workshop ≠ Scholarly Peer Review To help students not confuse the term peer review and the concept of Scholarly Peer Review (used like American Idol) gatekeeping to determine the highly competitive acceptance of articles for academic publication with the supportive workshops we do in class, I now refer to class work as workshop instead of peer review.

Why workshop at all? • Teaching students how to workshop effectively works towards course outcomes • For their own revision and skills as a writer • For critical thinking – they can analyze each other’s work and learn a lot from seeing other work • Learning to coach another writer can transfer to revising their own work • For strengthening their writing community

Aspects of Peer Workshop • Using different models of workshop • Quick Valentines, lengthier analysis, pairs, etc. • Encouraging students to engage seriously in workshop • Helping English Language Learners get the most from workshop • Focusing first on Global or Higher Concerns • Content and organization before grammar

Workshops in all writing classes Onsite, hybrid, or online classes • Nearly all assignments have some kind of workshop – more or less formal, nearly all written • On site get some in-class workshops, typically with written follow-up • Some workshop is in Discussion Board (esp. for PPTs) • Feedback via letters or worksheets • Worksheets are often variations on the scoring guide • Earning points for workshop encourages participation and provides an opportunity for instructors to explain effective feedback • Models of good feedback help students

Teaching Students to Workshop • Discuss in class what they have liked and hated about peer review workshop before • Encourage students to be proactive and ask for what they want feedback on • Show students how the process helps them think about what their own assignment does well and needs help with • Suggest the 3 + 3 guideline: list 3 aspects that are working well + 3 suggestions for improvement

Provide guidelines for workshop • Lisa Ede’s textbook Work in Progress: A Guide to Academic Writing and Revising 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. has guidelines for working with responses from • Peers • Instructors • Family and friends (“My mother loved it!”) • Writing tutors

How specific? • Depends on the assignment • A resume workshop will be very specific on format, grammar, and quantified content • A technical report workshop will look at required elements (abstract, keywords, headers, charts) • An essay workshop may be more philosophical about ideas and writing voice

Quality peer response earns more points Dear --------: First off, I wanted to thank you for giving me the chance to read your essay. I appreciated your efforts to match the style and voice of the piece with the subject and I think that the core idea, that reading is more than an act of consumption, but an active method we use to interact with the world, is both fascinating and uniquely builds on the prompt. Good work. With that in mind, there are a few things that I believe that you should consider when moving forward with revisions. The first is your sentence structure and word choice……. • Model a quality response • Give feedback on the focus and quality of the workshop • Get student permission to share excellent workshop letters

Using Discussion Forums Some drafts get more response from peers than others

1st draft workshop Students post drafts in Discussion Board and read as many drafts as they want --Sometimes they are assigned paired partners --Sometimes it is “first come, first served” --They then review two classmates’ drafts and offer suggestions --They get points for posting on time and posting quality responses

Sample online workshop Adapting the scoring guide as a worksheet helps students focus on the assignment and the outcomes

Even without worksheets Give students encouragement and guidance on their responses

English Language Learners • Written feedback is more helpful than just discussion • They can take time to read a peer’s work and consider • They can take time to write to the peer • They can have written feedback to study while they revise • The discussion may go too quickly and idiomatically to process effectively

Research shows the value of workshop Workshop in all courses, not just writing courses

WIC Learning Lunch: Friday April 25, 2014