Today I had the students in my class to do peer reviews of each other’s collaborative writing projects, and, at first, I was a bit stumped on how to organize the workshop. Typically before peer-review sessions I provide a handout with a list of questions for individual student reviewers to respond to when they read each other’s papers, but since I was working with collaborative groups I didn’t think this method would work. First, I didn’t think that individual peer review would be appropriate for collaborative groups, and, second, I felt that at this point in the semester the students knew more about their papers than me, and it wouldn’t be best for me to dictate what issues the peer reviewers should look for.

Since my students have already had some experience working with a number of different revising strategies, what I ended up doing was having each group generate a list of questions for their peer reviewers to respond to, questions that could address what the group perceived to be the current limitations of their paper. The activity seemed to work well, generating some good discussion over both the questions and the responses to those questions. I’m not sure if it seemed successful because the students identified their own problems with their papers, or if more conversation was generated because the students read each other’s papers in groups. In either case, I think I’m going to try it again.

Click on “read more” to see assignment description.

Tom Wright over at Kairosnews asks how folks are using Google Docs in the classroom. He's using it for a collaborative project, and a comment to his post mentions a couple of other applications. I know Clay uses Google Docs in his "Lifehacking course". Many seem to like how Google docs lets you revert to previous versions (something wikis do as well). Any Google Docs acolytes out there? How else is it being used?

This is another great opportunity to get students participating in a collaborative writing space outside of the classroom:

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