Peer review journal

    My peer review experience in this class has been extremely limited.  I have only been able to attend one peer review workshop due to recent  medical conditions.  My experience was interesting to say the least.  I showed up and expected to find a full class, which wasn’t the case.  After discussing what was expected of us students with some peers; I set off to complete expectations.  I found another student that I haven’t really talked to this semester and asked him to exchange papers with me.  As we were peer reviewing each other paper, we kept having to reference the grading guide which was a inconvenience.  I think that was the one thing that slowed down a lot of the progress that could of been attained that day.  I believe that general guidelines could be a much more effective reviewing method than the specific questions.  I believe that grading the peer review experience could be used to effectively motivate people to contribute their fair share.  For example, if I was to exchange papers with another student and gave a mediocre review to that student the next class when the peer review reviews where distributed.  I would get a lousy mark and he would write a brief description of why he felt I deserved it.  The instructor would then have the final say in the matter when reviewing the review comments and either finding them to useful or garbage.
As for the current system I did find it helpful and it is the highest scored paper I have received this semester.  So to answer the next question, I believe it did make me a better writer because the person who reviewed my paper lived up to his expectations and I turn did my fair share.  To answer this question I believe that I would have to ask him if he took my peer review advice and if he got a better score because he took my advice.  The best input I think there is about the peer review process is that it allows you to see another persons paper and compare your own paper to theirs.  With that you can see your own short comings and their short comings as well as each others’ strengths.

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