Wednesday 7 December 2016

What Peer Review Means To Me - My Experience

Hello Again! Hmm... what does peer review mean to me. Peer review is actually quite valuable because it is the process of looking over someone's work and getting their opinion. It is allowing another perspective to come in and view your work and give constructive criticism on what they feel should either be changed or added to the work that you are doing. Peer review is also the process of making sure that your work is up to standard and giving any critiques that the person who is reviewing sees fit.

In class, we were asked by our professor to review some of our fellow classmates blogs. We sat in groups of 3s and shared our blogs and talked about what we had so far or what else we would add to our blog. Through this process,  it was actually helpful because I was able to gather some suggestions on what I could do to better improve my blog. It was also nice seeing the different ideas that my classmates had and how they felt about blogging. My group discussed their growth in writing and they felt that they improved a lot from when they initially started the course. What I also noticed is that within my group, we were all able to help each other out and take different ideas from each other's blogs. All our layouts were visually different and the way we all wrote was different but somehow we were able to add a bit of each opinion to each of our blogs. I felt that the whole process was outstanding. What also helped was that I did not initially have pages on my blog but one of the girls in my group quickly showed me how to do it and also complimented my colour scheme and showed me ways in which I could enhance my colour while still having the transparency of the background behind my words.

I have experienced peer reviews before but mostly with my friends and often times I wonder if they are giving me their honest opinion. I know with most friends, they want to spare your feelings so they will not give you the blunt and honest truth but this experience in class was different. We had to sit with people that we have never sat with and exchange blogs. Of course initially I was nervous but it turned out to be pretty good. My group was very honest with me and gave me ideas to still showcase my personality through my blog but also to make it look professional as well. My other experiences with peer reviews is back in high school when you have to have a rough draft written and exchange it with a classmate and have them look at it before submitting. That helped improve my writing drastically as well as editing skills and made me exposed to having people read my work. Peer review also helps pick up on mistakes that maybe you would not have noticed on your own so it definitely has its benefits.

In the future, I will try this process with my class, because I feel as though it will help build their writing skills. It also helps build communication and connection skills because they are sharing their work with each other. There is also building of mental and cognitive skills. Peer review in the classroom gives the students the opportunity to provide feedback and their own ideas to help improve another classmate's initial thought. In the end, the results will showcase in their writing. I definitely encourage adding peer review to the classroom, you will be happy you did.

As Tony the Tiger said, Peer Review is


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