As a reviewer:
- Critique the argument, rather than the person. Ex: "This argument seems to be missing a step, can you please explain this part?" rather than "You skipped ideas in your argument."
- Specific comments related to the objectives are helpful, rather than "it is good." (Full stop.) Keep in mind our criteria of grounding, clarity, engaging, and organized.
- As a reviewer, ask for clarification on confusing points. (Psst: clarity.)
- Hearing your work reviewed is an emotional experience. Be gentle.
- Think about providing your feedback in a "sandwich" format (good thing, critical thing, good thing) or as warm and cool feedback (warm=good, cool=critical, avoiding extremes of hot and cold).
- Provide help in seeing the places that need grounding, and in seeing places in the literature that can provide that grounding.
- Focus on ideas, not copyediting.
- Focus on the argument, not whether you agree with the argument (in terms of the values represented). (Psst: organization.)
As a writer:
- Help the reviewer know what you want feedback on. Ex: "I know this specific section doesn't make much sense yet, but I'd like some feedback on whether the overall argument is clear."
- Don't expect your reviewer to copy-edit. Get help elsewhere for this -- the writing lab may be a place for such help.
- If the feedback you are getting from your reviewer is not helpful -- courage! You are welcome to redirect them by emphasizing what would be more helpful. However, recognize that sometimes they may have valid points even if you were hoping for feedback on something else.
- Ask for reviewing feedback from others, including family members, friends in other programs, graduate colleagues, other colleagues. Peer reviewing can happen outside this class more frequently than we do it inside the class.
The groups we had on 9/23/10:
- Julia, Diana, Jeremi
- Corey, Nikitha, Tatiana
- Lorie, Beth, Xingyu
- Tosin, Dan, Benjamin
- Mariana, Nichole, Jeff
- Angela, Ruth, Tamecia
- Natalie, Xin, Hadi
