Peer review is an important step in the writing process and can be a valuable step in enhancing critical thinking skills and learning. It encourages students to do their best work since fellow students, not just the teacher, will be reviewing it. It also provides insight, knowledge and different perspectives from colleagues and fellow students also engaged in learning and understanding the same material. In addition, reviewers benefit and learn by having to think critically about another person’s work. In a past post we discussed how Webspiration Classroom™ service can help your students through each step of the writing process. Today I want to explore how Webspiration Classroom can facilitate students peer review sessions for writing and other work.
With Webspiration Classroom all peer review is done on the same document, letting others see what comments have been made and allowing them to build off those comment threads with more suggestions and ideas. The author sees all the comments right in their own version of the document so there is no need to collect different suggestions and correlate them to review the feedback. All distribution and feedback is stored in the cloud so the documents are always available to both reviewers and the author, streamlining access to the work. Let’s see how easy it is:
Assign peer review partners and share documents.
Once your students have done their research and organized and developed their document to the point where it is ready for review, it is time for them to invite reviewers to the document. Inviting is easy:
- Click on the “Collaborate” tab to the right of the document and then click the “Invite” button.
- Type in the Webspiration Classroom username or email address then click the check box button to add people to review your document. Or you can click on the Friends or Teacher tabs to locate and add people from those lists. To add from the tabs click the checkbox to the left of the name then click the Add button.
- After you click the check box or Add button, set the Role for these people to Reviewer. This lets your peers review and comment on your document in the Comment panel, but not actually change your document. If you want your reviewers to edit your work, give them Collaborator status.
- Click “Share.”
- If you want you can even send a message to the people you invite giving them history of the document and instructions of what you would like them to review or look for.
- To learn more about document sharing, visit our Help Center at http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/classroom-gettingstarted/help/invitingothers.
Now, when reviewers open their Document Manager to work on documents, they will see the document listed in their list of documents and can just open it and start reviewing.
Ask reviewers to consider certain things when reviewing.
While a reviewer reads through a peer’s document, he or she might evaluate the document for clear purpose, message, content, research data, clarity, structure, and cohesiveness. You may or may not also want to have reviewers correct grammar. Reviewers can add overall comments using the General comment area or make specific comments on a symbol and its symbol text, or on a topic and the notes text. Comments in Webspiration Classroom let reviewers share their feedback without overwriting or obstructing the original text.
- To add comments, click the Comment tab to the right of the document.
- Reviewers can add overall comments using the General comment area. If they want to make specific comments on a symbol and its symbol text, or on a topic and its notes text, they just select the symbol or topic and click the Add Comment button (on the top toolbar).
- To add a general comment, type in the General box. If there are comments in that box that you want to add to, click the Plus button to create another box to add to this thread.
- To comment on a specific symbol or topic, select the symbol and topic and click on the Add Comment button at the top of the Collaboration Panel. This will assign a number to the symbol or topic and create a comment area tied to the number. Reviewers add their comments there. As with the General comments, once a note has been added, others can add additional recommendations to the comment creating threads.
- To learn more about commenting, visit our Help Center at http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/classroom-gettingstarted/help/comment.
The author of the document can easily monitor the review process, seeing comments and identifying who has completed their review and who hasn’t. Once the review is done the author can move on to the next step in their process, evaluating the comments, editing and redrafting their document.
Webspiration Classroom can facilitate and improve the peer review process. And because students can work from any computer with Internet connection, peer review can become a homework assignment, done at the library, at home, at a community center, or after school program. Teachers can even monitor the review process and assess a student’s participation level by looking at who wrote the comments and evaluating their level of response. Webspiration Classroom makes it easy for students to participate in and take advantage of peer review and for teachers to monitor this valuable step in the learning process.
Thanks for stopping by! Please let me know if you have any questions.
Sarah Cargill
Thinkspiration Ambassador, Inspiration Software
