Introduction

You may have done peer review once before. You may have completed peer review three times a semester in each semester for the past three years. You may even be doing peer review for the first time. In a course like Writing for Nonprofits, we come from many different academic disciplines and different coursework, which means we need to spend just a bit of time ensuring we are all on the same page when it comes to peer review. This chapter begins with an FAQ intended to briefly explain the Whats and Whys of peer review, followed by a link to E. Shelley Reid’s OER textbook Rethinking Your Writing: Rhetoric for Reflective Writers, which will elevate all of our understanding of how to do peer review (and personal review of our drafts) more effectively.

What is peer review?

Generally speaking, the term is self-explanatory: It is a review [of something] completed by a peer.

In the context of writing classes, peer review is a review of a draft text performed by a peer in class either during or outside of class.

Why do we have to do peer review?

Believe it or not, research in the field of writing studies has shown many benefits that come to writers who put in the effort during peer review. Here are a few ways students benefit:

• Peer review is a form of user testing. You’ve been thinking about this assignment for a while, and you know what you’re trying to accomplish, how much effort you’ve put into it, and the struggles you’ve overcoming in this project. But review is about re-viewing, or seeing our writing from a different perspective. Our peers don’t know what we’re trying to say—only what they’re hearing in our writing. Getting feedback from a peer offers insight into how a real audience is making sense of our writing and what one audience thinks could improve the text. Who wouldn’t want that kind of input before submitting for a grade?
• Students who give peer feedback may improve their writing more than students who merely receive peer feedback. (Baker & Lundstrom, 2009) Why? The process of considering the requirements of an assignment and evaluating an actual text against those requirements improves your ability to recognize “good writing” in the context of that assignment. It also strengthens our ability to review our drafts and shows us either good examples that we might want to model our writing after or sometimes a concrete example of what not to do.
• According to Washington University in Saint Louis, peer review can teach us some key composing and reading skills, such as
  • how to read carefully, with attention to the details of a piece of writing (whether their own or another writer’s);
  • how to strengthen their writing by taking into account the responses of actual and anticipated readers;
  • how to make the transition from writing primarily for themselves or for an instructor to writing for a broader audience— a key transition for students as they learn to write university-level papers and as they prepare for their professional work;
  • how to formulate and communicate constructive feedback on a peer’s work;
  • how to gather and respond to feedback on their own work.

I’m not an expert. Can’t I skip peer review?

Consider this insight from the Sweetland Center for Writing. What do you learn about what it means to be an “expert reader”?

“Who am I to judge?”

Some students are self-conscious about their own adequacy as evaluators of other students’ work; they feel that, as peers, they do not have superior experience or knowledge and are in fact so in need of help with their own writing that they cannot possibly offer valuable feedback to a fellow student. An easy and honest reply to this kind of trepidation is that peer review is not about making definite pronouncements, but rather about offering advice, which writers can consider and then apply only if it seems helpful. In addition, it is arguable that, as a student in the same class, the peer reviewer knows more about the expectations of the assignment and the challenges it presents than anyone except the instructor. The peer reviewer is actually more, not less qualified than an “expert” from outside the class.

I’ve done peer review in the past, and it was a waste of time. Can’t I skip it?

Consider this insight from the Sweetland Center for Writing about two reasons students often resist engaging with peer review. Consider how your attitudes and beliefs have reflected these patterns and how you can adjust your perspective to be more open and engaged with peer review.

Complaint #1: “I’m getting mixed messages.”

Sometimes students have difficulty deciding between conflicting comments from their peers. It can be helpful to acknowledge that choosing which advice to follow is not always easy and to provide opportunities for your students to talk with you, either in writing or in person, before they decide what to do. For example, you might have them complete a simple questionnaire immediately after the review session that includes questions such as, “What is the most important revision you plan to make to this paper?” and “What questions do you still have about how to revise this draft?”

Complaint #2: “The peers who read my paper never give me helpful feedback.”

Occasionally students will complain that the advice and comments about their papers that they receive from peers is unhelpful. Even for students who feel this way, peer review can still be a useful process because it is not only the feedback a writer gets that makes peer review valuable, but also the opportunity to read and, more importantly, critique other students’ work. The exercise of analyzing and explaining how a peer tackles an assignment—or fails to—should make a writer think more deliberately about his or her own work.

What’s the difference between in-class peer review and peer review performed in academic publishing?

Not a lot, actually. The main difference is in the rhetorical context of both activities.

Rhetorical context of academic peer review for scholarship: Writers seeking to publish their research are experts in a given field who have completed original research to contribute to the ongoing conversations in their field (purpose). The audience of their future publications are also scholars who have expertise and who want to learn from other research to refine their own and to continue adding to the knowledge in their field. The peer reviewer’s job is to ensure that the writer’s work meets their field’s standards for conducting research, that the conclusions drawn are appropriate given the data collected, and that the writer has conducted enough research on existing scholarship to understand the issue.

Rhetorical context of peer review in the classroom: Writers may have little (or even a lot) of expertise in the topic they are writing about. They may even have a lot of experience writing the genre (type of writing) required for the assignment. But the topic, genre, stance, and design of the text is situated within how the class has been discussing the topic and genre, not how they are used outside the classroom space. The peer reviewer’s expertise comes from their knowledge of how our class has discussed a topic (ex: mutual respect and reciprocity with NPO partners) and genres (memos, white papers, etc.). If we give our drafts to “experts,” such as a friend who writes memos all the time for their job, their understanding may be quite different than what the assignment asks for. In other words, you are the expert on how to write about this topic in this classroom situation.

Reviewing a Written Draft by E. Shelley Reid

Please read “Reviewing a Written Draft” from E. Shelley Reid’s Rethinking Your Writing: Rhetoric for Reflective Writers.

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