Peer Reviews: An Opportunity to Both Learn and Teach
While I’ve sought out review and input from peers and colleagues throughout my career, my current job is the first place that has had official peer reviews as part of the work product development process. And, personally, I love it.
No man is an island. Our sum is greater than our parts. Regardless of how you look at it, it’s rare that a task can be completed without *any* errors. Come on, we all use spell check and I’m backspacing to correct typos as I write this.
If we weren’t able to take advantage of another set of eyes, most of us would make embarrassing mistakes…likely repeatedly.
Peer reviews have helped me become more familiar with the standards, preferences, operations, and people within the organization I joined about seven months ago. Having others look at my work before it went to a SME (or worse, to the LMS) has reinforced the processes I need to follow, as well as pass on this knowledge to others through their peer reviews.
Learning
Being the new kid on the block is always an uncomfortable situation, regardless of your experience or how much you love your job. One of the best ways to get through that is to throw yourself into your work and not be afraid to ask questions and take on projects.
In my current position, I was lucky enough to have the review of others as part of the process we follow. I think this helped me more quickly get up to speed on a lot of the standards of this group in the feedback given to me, as well as to be able to see the work of others to get a good feel for what work this department produces, what layouts work better than others, and to get ideas for different features and functionality that could be brought into my courses.
It's a humbling experience to start a new job, have new peers, and open your first course up to them. But it’s just as humbling to look at their work and note that they also make simple mistakes that we’re all embarrassed we make.
When doing peer reviews, I also read the comments of others. This helps me know what things to look out for, who I might be able to go to with questions about specific things, and what I can do to improve my own work.
The other benefit of reading other reviewers’ comments is to get a feeling of how to word feedback. How feedback and suggestions are approached can make a huge difference in whether or not the suggestions are incorporated and your peer understands why you said what you said.
In the end, being able to share openly and freely with your teammates and knowing that they will do the same with you makes for an overall stronger team environment. It builds stronger interpersonal connections.
Teaching
The more you know, the more you can teach others. By having thorough peer reviews of my courses, I learn more and more about what to look for while reviewing the work of my peers.
I am one of three new IDs on this team – the “old timer” by being the first hired. As such, I’ve felt some sense of responsibility to pass along the learnings I’ve had from peer reviews and my brief additional time there.
In addition to (hopefully) teaching my peers, this has taught me a couple of things. It has helped reinforce what I know that I know. It has also shown me where I need to learn more. Sometimes you look at something and know that it’s not right, but you don’t know why – so you do some research, figure out how it needs to be corrected, and explain that to your peer. Now I’ve both taught and learned, and that’s a pretty good day’s work.
References
Fauxels. (n.d.). Overhead shot of people at a table with papers and computers image. https://www.pexels.com/photo/top-view-photo-of-people-near-wooden-table-3183150/.
Popova, M. (n.d.). How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently. https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism/.
Winkler, M. (n.d.). Typewriter image. https://unsplash.com/photos/-fRAIQHKcc0.