Sunday, November 1, 2009

What you've learned from peer review . . .

So, over the course of the semester, you have done a great many peer review memoranda. What have you learned from writing these memos to your peers? What have you learned from receiving them? Exchanging information about technical documents is a part of professional life; often this exchange of information is in a less formal form than a proper memorandum (often it is just a verbal exchange or a quick email). Nevertheless, what lasting knowledge have you gained from the peer review process? Finally, how might this process be changed and improved (for a classroom context like ours or for a professional context)?

7 comments:

  1. The one thought that is most outstanding to my mind when I think of writing those memorandums is that they are very to the point, which I like. As far as what I have learned from them, well I would have to say it would be the critic on my writing style. I don't think that this (peer-review) is any different than what you do in undergraduate or in high school. Only in this case, we take the matter more seriously.

    I don't know how I would change or modify it. I think that for the most part, it is how it needs to be. Peer-review is no different now than 20 years ago and it is the same for undergraduates as it is for graduates.

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  2. Writing a memorandum was useful to a certain limit. It was certainly useful in helping me read other work with a critical eye; an eye to pick out errors or even to pick out ways to improve things that are said/done in a certain way. It also helped me develop a way to state my critiques in a professionally acceptable way, I learned how to say that certain things are not so good or could be improved with out coming across as rude. I also learned how to deal and handle negative comments from others and to use them to my advantage.Finally, by reviewing other work and finding errors and/or weakness, I learned how to avoid doing them myself.
    I think that the process of writing a memorandum is useful in terms of learning what a memorandum is and how to write it to others and how to receive it from others, but I also think that the number of memorandum we wrote in this class a too much.

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  3. Peer review is a matter that should be taken seriously. You never know when you will be proof reading someone's class assignment, thesis or an article that will be submitted to a journal. There should be enough time provided to allow the editor to read over the subject mutiple times in order to 1) obtain a feel for the paper and material covered; 2) allow for edits and remarks and 3)allow for appropriate suggestions on how to impove the paper. I feel that in the class sometimes enough time was not given in order to provide appropriate edits and suggestions.

    In order to improve peer review projects for class the time frame of the assignment should be modified. Not all of us can proof read a paper in an hour. And if the assignment is completed within the hour, then sometimes the review is not helpful at times because the edits are rushed. Another thing is to possibly reduce the number of peer reviews to provide a better time frame for editing the more appropriate assignments and class project.

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  4. Sometimes we forget to correct a silly mistake. Even thou' we read our paper 10 times we might not spot some mistakes. Peer reviewing would help to spot these errors. Sometimes my flow of language is monotonic which my peer might feel bored so might suggest changing.

    The most important is before being embarrassed by other its easy to have your peer check for those dumb mistakes.

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  5. I think the peer review through the memorandums was useful, because it allow to improve our critize and edition skills. Further, peer review permits to understand several forms of writing style and makes us think about the proper ways of higlight and correct errors, without imposing our own style on somebody else style. however, I think it would be interesting to practice other techniques of communication of this information, such as reports, technical notes, or other that can be applied to this objective.

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  6. I liked peer reviewing assignments. It not only provided me an opportunity to help my fellow colleague to improve his text, but also it made me aware of the styles, words, formats which I did not like. So I tried not to use them in my text. Also, after doing so many reviews, I have come to a conclusion that peer reviewing is an art. One needs to be skilled enough to tell his (or her) colleagues about his (or her) writing mistakes without hurting his (or her) self-confidence or potentially risking his (or her) friendship. I made both friends and foes by my critical reviews. Most of the times, these reviews were in a form of a memorandum. I personally found any memorandum to be only helpful when they accompany with the marked-up copy of the test. Nonetheless, memorandums are a very concise way to pass your reviews to your colleague. The writing course gave me an opportunity to learn essential parts of a formal memorandum. This is important. In today’s business culture, employers assume their potential employees know how to write an interoffice memorandum (at least). So this course is just an attempt to justify the assumption.

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  7. I believe one the good aspect of this course or it is better to say that one the good parts in this course syllabus was peer review.
    Peer reviews helped me to get familiar how to critique somebody textually. After all these peer reviews, I know how to start it and how to end it, and also what the content should be as well as the format and style of the memorandums.

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