hello friends and welcome back to the channel in this essay we're going in this video we're going to be talking about peer review peer review is a process that is that's kind of a I guess I could say it's a little bit misunderstood there are some good aspects of peer review and there are some bad aspects of peer review so we're gonna talk about it and it's a hopefully you'll this will make sense so peer review is the process by which you get information from your you know your peers on your writing so in this
case one thing that I want you to keep in mind is that peer review has a couple purposes the first purpose is get you to see others are writing to help you so in this case you're going to see what other people are doing with their papers and that's actually going to help you with your papers because you're gonna be oh wow they did not oh maybe I should do that in my paper that's the kind of thing that a peer review can help with the other thing is get another pair of eyes on their
own paper so part of writing is ensuring that your reader is understanding what you're talking about and is that you're communicating effectively you know you know we you and me through the final draft portion of things we cover this when I read through and then I give feedback on but the difficulty that you have here is that sometimes that doesn't always work sometimes there's not enough time for you and me to for me to see the paper you know while it's still in the development phase because you know enough in a class in an English
1a class I've got 30 people that I have to to read and there's not enough time for me to read everybody's rough draft so this is a way for you to get some feedback before you have to show it to me now one thing that I want to keep in mind here is that yours you and your peers you're not necessarily in the same place when it comes to the class it is entirely possible that your peers understand the assignment better than you do and it's entirely possible that you understand the assignment better than they
do so one thing I want to want to need you to keep in mind is that what your peers say about your paper is not necessarily you know the end all and be all what your peers say about your paper it's something to pay attention to especially if multiple peers say the same thing so for instance if one student says wow your thesis was crap and then the other student says your thesis was awesome that's an interesting question and you're you're gonna then probably going to want to ask me to be a little bit of
a tiebreaker but if you look and you see oh your thesis is great alright let's let's rephrase this if you if one peer says wow I didn't really understand that example you used and then another peer says wow I didn't really understand that example you used now you should probably pay attention to that example and make sure that you clarify it as best you can so I want to go through a few tips and tricks for peer review how to do it well and then we can talk about the specific procedure and what's going to
look at so the thing is peer review horror stories and I have found that the best example of peer review horror stories is similar to the most famous peer reviewers in the world and this is dating me but anybody remember should I'll call American Idol yeah so let's take a look at some peer review here from the judges on American Idol I know I'm not gymnast but I listen to persuade and why are you laughing about why did you yes because it yourself it he looks like a gymnast o outfits got sneakers on I mean
I guess the t-shirt yeah oh yeah t-shirt gymnast alright including ourselves exactly I don't even know where to begin honestly if you watch the show have you watched the show I do watch the show Fantasia Barrino no did you have the volume up that'll work on the image if you need to pack up some clothes and not fun I think you're truly unique and truly challenges selling grab use this analogy before it's like Antiques Roadshow you know whether describing the history to please all they're thinking is how much is it was my opinion of how
joyful and how happy you've made me would you rather get straight to be it it's the honesty that I appreciate so if you both honestly I appreciate it sure look I I'm honest with you Michael I'm more with Jean on this okay but I'm gonna give you one more chance thank you very much thank God thank you let's just see what happens the hard way baby you are you're so obnoxious [Music] Oh how long can Paula stand it next to Cal in there tensions have been building all day I'm gonna tell you something we're on
a short schedule you go first well I'm still trying to figure in articulate what I'm trying to say Oh Lord I think that guy's reaction essentially sums up what I think about about peer review figuring articulate Oh Lord so one of the things that I want to point out about what's going on here is you have sort of - in this video you have two different styles of giving feedback to the singers all right and granted this is a reality TV show it's a different different ballgame but some of the same things that I see
in here happen in peer review when students give their feedback on each of those writings so you have Symons you have Paula's so Simon is kept the kind of person who will be like do you have a vocal coach and the person's like no says well you should have him loaded right that's not very helpful insulting somebody is not very helpful but then you have Paula's and Paula is like I just really appreciate the way that you made me feel about the energy and the spirit of your writing and it's just there were good vibes
well that's not helpful either because Simon will get straight to the point he's a jerk Paula will be nice but she's just sort of super vague around sort of this miasmatic commentary neither of these are helpful what is helpful is a little bit of the mix of the two or maybe his Simon is mean but clear Paula is nice but vague and the best peer review is a mix best peer-review is nice but clear right nice but clear because it doesn't help your reader if you it doesn't help your reader if you're mean to them
but it also doesn't help your reader if if you're really paying and what's interesting is the the guy when Paula asked in the video well who would you rather hear from me who says you makes you who wants to talk about how nice it made me feel or pop or Simon who's like we'll just get to the point and the guy says well I appreciate the honesty so the best peer review is honest so here are some tips for giving feedback on on your peers errors so I'm going to send out a list of questions
alright and this this might not be the the questions that I send out it might not look exactly like this but it might is probably pretty similar so I have a couple questions that I want you to answer for your peers and I want you to answer them nice but honest so the questions will usually look something like this make these smaller okay so these are similar questions that I will likely ask like I says it might not be specifically like this but these are kinds of questions that I usually ask I will usually ask
students what's the single best part of the stuff appears paper because you always want to open with something nice what's something that they did well what's the single thing they need to work on the most because again we want to get to the point what can they do to improve and then usually I ask general questions about sort of the big picture issues in the paper thesis statement did they follow the prompt did you have trouble did you ever get lost or did you get confused how were your examples these questions I asked because those
are kind of the the big-ticket items when it comes to getting graded notice what I don't ask about I don't ask about grammar I don't ask about format because honestly those aren't that big of a deal because you can always fix those later I'm looking at sort of big picture issues I don't need you to go sentence by sentence and explain and you know get out your red pen and scratch out stuff from your people from your peers paper I don't need any of that what I want you to do for your students for your
peers is to answer these big-picture questions but answer them specifically and honestly so what do I not want to see you know what was the best part of your paper don't answer I like to it was fun that doesn't tell your reader anything so what you would want to do it would be like I liked that example you shared about about going fishing with your grandfather it was really that's an example of something that you could write because if you are specific I could say okay that that part I liked here's what I did that's
something that's going to be useful for your reader to understand single thing your paper needs to work if you work on the most it was wrong I didn't good these don't help so the thing that you need to work on the most you would want to point out something specific like like I noticed you didn't include quotes from your ex head sorts I think that was required so make sure you do it again this is specific but it's also not like the salty it's but it's a a specific recommendation and I can't that's what I'm
looking for figure out what's something that they could do to improve and answer it avoid sort of like it was fine yeah it was fine doesn't actually tell your reader anything that's at being Paula that's being nice but it's not being clear what you would want to do is say all right I can clearly see how each paragraph led to the next they all seemed on topic and I could tell from the topper sentences what each paragraph would be a that's an example of a paragraph that'll work or a response that's going to work so
these are the kinds of comments that I want to see from you I don't be a Simon don't be a Paula be nice and clear be honest but you don't have to be a jerk nobody knows that they're doing all right you're all in this together you're all learning and so that's gonna be what you need to do so how are you going to give the feedback all right so what I'm going to do is in after I get after the rough drafts are due I'm gonna wait for until the grace period is up and
so I'm gonna go so you know the rough drafts are due at 11:59 p.m. so then I'm gonna at Newton the next morning I'm gonna take everybody who wrote who turned in a rough draft I'm going to randomize their names and then I'm going to send an email to each student with put to put separate you into random groups so the reason I do random is because you never want to be the kind of thing where it's like okay well oh all of the a students get together and they're all they're all critique each other's
papers or all of the people who aren't doing so hot in the class and get to go together and they critique each other's papers I randomize it so it's is totally luck of the draw who it is that gets to comment on your paper so I'm going to randomize you into groups and then what you're going to do is you're going to respond to your peers paper by answering these questions and you're gonna send your peer the answers to these questions then at the end of that just so I can see what you will do
is you will take your answers and upload your answers and put them on canvas so that I can grade them so you will send your answers to your peer and then you're also going to send the answers to canvas so that I can grade them you're going to be you're going to be reviewing multiple peers so you will send your answers to your multiple peers but then you're going to take all of your answers for all of your peers post them on one document and submit that to canvas that's the easiest way I have found
for you to be able to give feedback on your peer's work without things getting super messy so that's the way it'll work if you have any since about this please let me know I will be I will be sending out the emails soon once the our current rough draft is done so that that way you will know how to respond to your colleagues that should do it for this video and I'll talk to you later
