Peer Review
An instructor in the Department of English describes "blog space" as an educational workplace. Spring Semester 2005, he taught two sections of English 102, First-Year Composition, in which students write critical papers on selected subjects.
In his classes students write approximately 1,000 words a week. With 50 students overall, he needed to structure his course so that students relied less on his reading 50,000 words a week. What he has developed is an educational experience in which he comments on the students' blog entries the first few weeks and then turns the commenting over to the students. After that he reads each student's entries quickly, to get a sense of what they wrote and to identity any possible problems. Of course, in class he has taught students appropriate ways to critique another student's entry and how to provide constructive feedback.
In the following example, you see a student's blog entry for one assignment. In this assignment, this student has composed a 700 word synopsis of what his paper will be. The title is Money In A New Sport and he is writing about the infusion and influence of money in skateboarding.
View screen shot of a student's entry for English 102.
View comment this student received from a classmate.
In the first paragraph of the comment you get a sense of the quality of the critique. The student wrote:
"I think you have a very good start to your paper. Overall it flows well and keeps the readers attention with a lot of new information. Everything relates well with your thesis. Some things you could work on is leading each sentence into the next paragraph because some of them kind of just jump right into the next topic. Another thing is the quotes, which you could lead the reader into a little bit more. Also, I think you could split the second paragraph into two, with the first talking about the Zephyr team and the second about Tony Hawk."
The first student then revised his concept entry to a second blog entry of 1330 words that incorporated the suggestions in the comment.
The instructor finds that by empowering students to read and comment, it extends the learning space beyond the rigidity of the physical classroom, fosters relationships among the students and vests students more in their own learning experience. By writing in individual blogs as compared to turning a paper into him, his students found a voice.
