Even though I am in my
second year of undergraduate studies, ES1102 is the first class I have taken
which involved regular peer-review and tutor feedback. The class required us to
maintain our own e-portfolios on a blog, which were to contain all our work for
the semester. Every week we had assignments that we had to upload on our
individual blogs. At the beginning of the semester, our professor organized us
into blogging groups of three to four. After posting on my blog, I received
feedback from peers from both within and outside my blogging group, as well as
from my professor, regarding my ideas, organization, content and grammar.
Following up on this, I would revise the draft to incorporate changes. Additionally,
I would comment and review my peers’ work in a similar manner.
Feedback based classes
are important to allow students to improve on their work, by realizing their
mistakes, knowing their strengths and understand their work from another person’s
point of view. Getting feedback regarding organization, relevance and content
was indeed useful in preparing more concrete drafts of the same essays. I
really liked how the feedback would include a ton of positive comments. These
were useful in brainstorming on how to change or improve my ideas and the flow
of the essay in general.
This class simply
reinforced my beliefs in peer and tutor evaluation by proving it to be so much
more useful than I previously thought. Peer review plays a major role in making
students feel accountable for themselves and their peers. It also encourages
engaging communication in the classroom setting. This system has given me a
glimpse at the possibilities of learning from the person sitting next to you than
any lecture has dared to. Tutor feedback was more personalized in ES1102 than
most classes I have attended at NUS. This mechanism helped me pin point my
problems in writing and improve in certain weak areas.
(400 words)
Thank you, Naina, for this comprehensive, well focused reflection. First you contextualize the module writing assignments and the feedback sessions well. You then focus the discussion on the value of the peer and tutor feedback, and you express your opinions on all these various aspects with good clarity. It’s interesting to me that you placed particular value on the positive comments, which I feel are vital for motivating any of us to further develop a skill we are working on when so much of the feedback we get tends to be critical (not to say negative).
ReplyDeleteWhat I wonder about after reading your essay is what WERE the downsides of this review process. How did you feel about receiving commentary on, say, your language use from a peer whose English skills might not have been equal to yours?
In any case, I also appreciate the (short) attention you give to how this review process might be helpful for your writing in the future. Good luck with that, Naina, and the best of luck as you continue your learning journey!