OVERVIEW
While there may be differing views of a draft, the goal is to provide actionable feedback to the writer, resulting in a polished, revised version of the assignment. Students can earn up to 30 points for exemplary participation in a writing workshop.
Each student is responsible for 2 types of tasks during the writing workshop:
- Submitting a draft of your résumé with your internship position description —10 points
- Writing constructive peer reviews of 2 drafts—20 points (10 points per review)
Check out these sample peer reviews to better understand how to create exemplary, accomplished, and developing peer reviews. Please refrain from replying to peers who post feedback about your work when feeling misunderstood. It is often difficult not to defend your work. Instead of debating the quality of your draft, critically reflect on what to clarify going forward.
DRAFT REQUIRMENTS
The draft does not need to be perfect, but it must be a complete draft, largely adhering to the requirements of the assignment. In your initial reply to the discussion, indicate the type of feedback you are seeking from your peers, and then copy and paste the internship description into the body of the message. Attach your résumé draft as a PDF to minimize any formatting distortion (click the icon that looks like a paperclip to attach files).
Documents created using Google Docs or Office 365can be easily saved as a PDF.
PEER REVIEW REQUIREMENTS
Write 2 peer reviews for members of your workshop group. Please review drafts that have no reviews first. When all drafts have been reviewed at least once, please choose drafts with the fewest reviews and/or the drafts that have received the least amount of useful feedback.
To earn full credit, exemplary reviews will provide rhetorically-effective constructive criticism that reflects the requirements laid out in the assignment instructions and follow these guidelines:
- Start by briefly noting two or more assignment requirements you will focus on in your peer review.
- Create a clear section of the message indicating a positive aspect(s) of the draft and why that assignment requirement is largely successful.
- Create a clear section of the message indicating an aspect(s) of the draft that are an opportunity for improvement, which could mean revision and/or further development. To remain as objective as possible, I encourage you to reference what is in the class materials for the assignment, and then what you observe in the workshop draft.
- End by summarizing how your experience reviewing the draft impacted you as the reader.
- Model effective tone, document design, concision, and close attention to sentence level correctness.
- Post reviews in the body of a message as a reply to your classmates’ drafts.
Reviews that only praise the draft without providing suggestions for improvement—changes or areas to expand upon—will not earn full credit. Likewise, reviews that do not show an effort to remain tactful will not earn full credit.
ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK SUGGESTIONS
- Refer to the assignment instructions, the grading rubric, the related resources provided, and other class materials.
- Point out specific places in the draft that are successful, or not, and give reasons why—do not generalize.
- Pose questions if you are unsure about some aspect of the draft, but do not expect a response.
- Focus on recurrent errors when addressing sentence level correctness instead of identifying single lapses in proofreading. It is most useful to direct the writer to a resource detailing the issue or to provide an example of how to correct it in context.
- Keep feedback constructive and tactful.
- Avoid statements that sound as if you are criticizing the writer—focus on the draft