Collaboration and Peer Review Workshops and Collaborative Writing

The following two essays speak to the importance of assigning group work and peer editing in the composition classroom. Professors Beth Gulley and Ted Rollins address certain aspects of both, offering his or her individual perspective on a pedagogical matter that matters deeply to all writing instructors.

Collaboration

Beth Gulley

By now you have probably noticed that the course objectives for Introduction to Writing (ENGL 106) include group work, and the objectives for Composition I and II imply that students will at the minimum assist other students to make revisions. For many educators, the idea of expecting students to collaborate is commonplace, but for just as many, the idea of collaboration and especially “group work” is problematic. The common complaints, that group work is not fair because one student does all the work and then other students take credit for it, or that it can be difficult for teachers to know how to create and grade group work, are not without merit. Yet, there are compelling reasons to foster collaboration amongst students in the writing classroom.

Why Collaborate?

One reason assigning collaborative projects is worthwhile is that collaboration is a 21^st Century Workplace Skill. This means that the willingness and ability of people to collaborate will make them more marketable in the ever-evolving workplace. Another reason to encourage collaboration is that it aids in building student relationships. In research on student engagement, Tim Hodges reports that the number one reason that students persist in our classes is because they have a friend in the class.

In addition to social and practical benefits, according to the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornel University, collaborative learning leads students to improve in the “development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills.” Finally, collaboration is on of George Kuh’s high impact educational practices for college students. In an overview of Kuh’s book the benefits are explained this way, “Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with different backgrounds and life experiences.”

How to Collaborate?

There are many simple ways to encourage students to collaborate that do not require complicated grading rubrics or extensive design work on the teacher’s part. For example, teachers might ask students to write a response to a question, then share the response with their neighbor or table group. Then, to add an additional layer of problem solving to the activity, ask the groups to decide whose answer should be shared with the class. This is a version of “Think, Pair, Share” that can be applied to the kinds of creative work we ask composition students to do. Teachers might ask students to decide which introduction worked best or whose example most supported the claim.

Peer Review, of course, is the most common sort of collaboration that faculty in writing classrooms ask their students to do. Peer review comes with its own set of problems, chiefly that students don’t know how to respond to each other’s texts and don’t provide meaningful feedback. This can be averted if teachers model the sort of feedback they expect students to give. Furthermore, breaking the responses into small, manageable steps, and adding an element of fun into peer review makes that part of the writing process more meaningful. Speed dating peer review (where students move every five minutes from paper to paper and answer a single, specific question i.e. does the hook catch your attention? or is this paper formatted in MLA style?) and gallery walk peer review (where students hang their papers on the wall, and everyone walks around reading and commenting at once) are activities that incorporate all three elements.

Another useful group activity, particularly for developmental writers, is to have teams of students design a quiz based on material covered in class or through a reading assignment. Then a different team takes the quiz. The team who wrote the quiz must then score it. More classroom collaborations activities can include games, collective problem solving, Socratic circle discussion groups, and fishbowl debates. For additional suggestions for collaborative activities the following websites are helpful: The University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence, The Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation, and the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching.

Group papers and presentations can also work well in the writing classroom, but they take much more preparation from the teacher. Often, a group paper can be easier to assign near the end of the semester because the students are no longer strangers. As a result, better groups can form through student self-selection or wise teacher guidance. Sometimes it works to assign specific roles to group members, but often college students know their own strengths and can negotiate their own roles in relation to the project. Various personality inventories exist to help form groups. However, as writing teachers, we come to know our students well and can usually trust our own intuition when assisting students to form successful groups.

Works Cited

Brame, Cynthia and Rachel Biel. “Setting up and Facilitating Group Work: Using Cooperative Learning Groups Effectively.” Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University, 2015, cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/setting-up-and-facilitating-group-work-using-cooperative-learning-groups-effectively/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

“Collaborative Learning.” Center for Teaching Innovation, Cornell University, 2019, teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

“Group Work in the Classroom: Small-Group Tasks.” Centre For Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo, n.d., uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/group-work/group-work-classroom-small-group-tasks. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

Hodges, Tim. “Why a Best Friend at School Matters for Students and Teachers.” Education, Gallop,26 Feb. 2018, www.gallup.com/education/237272/why-best-friend-school-matters-students-teachers.aspx. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

Kuh, George. “High-Impact Educational Practices: A Brief Overview.” Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2008, www.aacu.org/leap/hips. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

“What Are 21st Century Skills?” Applied Educational Systems, 2019, www.aeseducation.com/career-readiness/what-are-21st-century-skills. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

Peer Review Workshops and Collaborative Writing

Ted Rollins

Peer Review Workshops

Peer review sessions—be they in a face-to-face or in an online environment—have the potential to help students become better readers and writers. In both environments students practice active reading strategies and hone their writing skills by offering comments to their peers.

Peer review sessions in the face-to-face environment typically involve students exchanging drafts with at least one other writer in the class, writing comments, and having a conversation with group member(s) based on their written comments. These activities might happen in one or multiple class meetings, depending on the length or complexity of the assignment and the questions students ask and answer.

While peer review sessions in the online environment are more asynchronous because students are not necessarily responding to each other’s drafts in real time, online peer review sessions are nonetheless valuable at accomplishing the same objectives. Some instructors use online discussion forums provided by the LMS, such as Canvas for peer review, while others use Google Docs and Turnitin.

When designing peer review workshops for students, keep in mind that (1) our students may have limited practice with reading and responding to the writing of others in the sophisticated ways we want them to do so (2) we should not assume that students already see the value of peer review or that simply having students read and respond to their peers’ writing is going to help students learn.

Having students read and write thoughtful comments on the drafts of their peers can be a powerful learning tool, but only if instructors define clear goals and model effective peer review strategies.

1. Towards that end, peer review goals should be well-defined and achievable. Why are we asking students to exchange, read, and write comments on student drafts in the first place? Are students asked to offer revision suggestions related to content, organization, or style? Is the goal for students to help a writer find and correct errors related to mechanics? To source integration? If they are reading the draft of an argument, are the readers being asked to play devil’s advocate by raising potential objections the opposition may have? In other words, students can become overwhelmed if they are being asked to achieve too many goals in any one peer review session. Limiting the number of goals for each peer review session, therefore, is a good idea. For instance, if students are working on writing a proposal in which they must prove the problem is urgent and show readers why their solution to the problem is feasible, having a peer review session dedicated to the “problem” part of the draft and then a later peer review session dedicated to the “solution” part of the draft may be helpful. Likewise, when asking students to respond to the narratives their peers have written, we might direct students to focus feedback on the extent to which the writer has made the significance of the story clear to readers. Giving students clear and manageable goals for each peer review session can go a long way in terms of helping to ensure that students benefit from peer review.
2. Equally important, we should model peer review strategies to show students how to read and respond to others’ drafts. One strategy to model for students when reading a draft is to annotate by identifying the writer’s key ideas (e.g. “This seems to be your main point”), recording reactions (e.g. “This example you give is interesting”), and posing questions (e.g. “How might people who disagree with you interpret this statistic you cite?”). Before having students read and comment on peer drafts, demonstrate how to read and annotate a sample draft. Sharing a sample of our own writing with students and using our writing to practice peer review strategies can also help show students that we are doing what we ask them to do as writers.
3. Another strategy to model involves using a “Dear Reader” letter to frame the peer review session as a meaningful exchange between writer and reader. In the “Dear Reader” letter the writer explains what aspect of the draft she or he feels most confident about (e.g. “I think the story in my introduction helps get readers interested”) and asks one question about the draft to prompt constructive feedback from an editor (e.g. “I only have one statistic to prove the problem is urgent. Do you think I need more evidence here? Why or why not?). As noted above, we can use a sample of our own writing to give students practice with peer review. Writing a “Dear Reader” letter and having peers respond to the question(s) the writers raise in their letters help give students practice in writing meaningful comments for other writers.
4. Furthermore, whether we ask writers to define the question(s) or whether we give students a set of questions to answer when responding to peer drafts, a third strategy for meaning peer reviewing is to limit the number of questions. Giving students a list of questions that ask them to address every—or nearly every—aspect of the draft is likely to result in vague, generic, unhelpful comments by students for their peers. By contrast, students are more likely to write thoughtful, helpful, and specific comments if we limit the peer review session to one or two key questions that reflect the goal(s) we want students to achieve.

Collaborative Writing

While collaborative writing assignments can take a variety of forms and have the potential to benefit students (by giving them an opportunity to get to know and learn from each other as writers) and teachers (by limiting the number of drafts we must comment on and grade), collaborative writing poses unique challenges for our students that we need to consider before assigning students to write as a team. One form of collaborative writing involves group activities, such as those that ask students to write shared responses to one or more questions related to the assigned reading(s). A key challenge here, as with other forms of collaborative writing, is to structure the activity in a way that encourages all students in the group to contribute. The type of collaborative writing activity defined above works best when each student is involved in co-authoring the group’s response. In a face-to-face class environment, therefore, requiring students in the group to sit together facing each other (or facing the same computer on which they are writing their response) is helpful. Of course, the asynchronous nature of online classes makes it more difficult for online students to write collaboratively in real time, but online discussion forums provide an excellent opportunity to have students collaborate by responding to each other’s original posts (or threads). Another version of collaborative writing involves requiring two or more students to write a research-based essay or some other genre together.

One example of an assignment that might lend itself to collaborative writing is a problem/solution essay or proposal. Ask students to work in groups by co-authoring a proposal in which they must prove the problem is urgent and show readers why their solution to the problem is feasible.

No matter what form the collaborative writing activity or assignment takes, implementing the following best practices can help promote student learning and success:

1. Give collaborative writing groups adequate time to complete the activity or assignment. Students often find writing as part of a team more difficult and time-consuming than writing on their own. While individuals may only need five minutes to write a response to a question in class, for instance, a group of three students working together to write a shared response may need double that time. On a related note, we should give students a well-defined timeline with due dates for process drafts and final drafts if we require students to co-author a major writing assignment such as an essay.
2. Appoint (or have each group appoint) a team leader responsible for keeping the group on track--not doing all or most of the work! Essentially, the team leader acts as liaison between the group and instructor. Even if the team leader is the liaison between the group and the instructor, however, instructors should also offer comments (whether oral comments when conferencing with the group or written comments on a draft) to the entire group.
3. Require students to divide the writing assignment into parts or sections and have each group member responsible for drafting a specific part. If students are co-authoring a problem/solution essay, for instance, one student might draft the “problem” part and another student might draft the “solution” part. Students writing a literature review might write individual summaries of sources in the group’s collection, but then write the final section of the review in which they synthesize the ideas of their sources together.
4. Encourage students to revise, edit, and proofread together. All students in the group should play a role in improving the draft, especially when different group members have taken the lead in drafting different parts of the draft. Each part or section is likely to reflect each writer’s individual style, so the group likely needs to find a way to make the draft come together as a coherent whole. On a related note, group members also should look for opportunities to make their draft’s structure and style more consistent. If students are co-authoring the same text, for instance, they need to change “I believe” to “We believe” and agree on a title for their document that reflects the group’s understanding of what they have written.
5. To prevent (or reduce the likelihood of) one or more students in the group not doing their fair share, have each member write an evaluation of their other members to submit only to the instructor. This evaluation can be useful if a student claims that she or he did all the work and others did little or no work! Instructors who have required students to write an evaluation of all group members helps them when evaluating or grading the collaborative writing assignment.