Convergence: Theory into Practice

Building a Pedagogical Foundation for the Game

KW: Once we had an outline of the game, we dove right in and started drafting a script. As we wrote (and wrote and wrote) we realized that we were each coming at the problem from a personal, idiosyncratic perspective and that we getting lost in a quagmire of endless possibilities. We needed a foundation, a baseline pedagogy for the game that would shape our strategy and help us make intelligent decisions about the script. Laura King, the Associate Editor on the project, gathered together everything Bedford has published on peer review. We read everything our book authors had written. We read Peter Elbow (whose brilliance can’t be overstated—we strove to make the tone of Peer Factor conform to his peer review philosophy). We talked with Nick Carbone and with Ryan about how they teach peer review. We talked about our experience as students engaging in peer review. From all of these readings and conversations, Laura created a short list of the peer review best practices which we worked together to shape into the game’s foundation. The development of the script was also shaped by a list of outcomes or “Learning Objectives” that Ryan defined.

RM: When I teach peer review in the writing classroom, I generally begin with allowing students to list all the things they hate about peer review. Their responses vary, but they typically range from those who consider themselves to be stronger writers saying something to the effect of “I’m afraid that I won’t get any useful feedback,” to those who do not consider themselves to be strong writers saying, “I don’t often know what to say to my peers that will help them.” In my classes, we talk about these expectations, and I have students write up rules for what they expect from each other. Thus, the rules are born from previous experiences with peer review, some that have were successful and some that were not. George (1984) discussed these strategies as being good for students who are new to the practice of peer review: “With this kind of classroom practice, instructors can deal with questions or fears about peer feedback because the entire class has the opportunity to see how to work from peers’ suggestions, to listen to the kind of dialogue that is profitable and the kind that is not, and to ask specific questions about the feedback that they are getting on their own papers from their groups” (p. 325). George discussed two more strategies that mark successful peer review groups: “In successful groups, the writer nearly always begins and encourages discussion” (pp. 323-324). George suggested that student writers bring specific questions to peer review sessions to help guide responses. Another successful tactic that George noted was that successful group discussions begin with the writer talking his or her group through the paper, summarizing main points and discussing areas of difficulty (p. 324).

Additionally, Elbow and Belanoff (1995) modeled an entire host of successful responding styles throughout their Sharing and Responding. And Holt (1984) took Elbow and Belanoff’s exercises one step further, arguing that student writers “gain a sense of play and inventiveness about their writing, and student responders learn that they have useful and creative things to say about their peers’ work” (pp. 385-386). Holt used Elbow and Belanoff’s exercises in conjunction with Bruffee’s series of peer critiques in order to “give students something to say and then push them toward a more complicated cognitive perspective in writing a peer review” (p. 388). We tried to incorporate the best of all these rules into the game. We wrote them up as the learning objectives of the game:

Learning Objectives

  1. Expose students to the activities and decisions involved in successful peer review process.
    1. players will choose from a selection of drafts for their peer review session.
    2. players will interact with realistic (and humorous) virtual peers.
    3. players must choose the best of four possible responses to their peer’s prompts.
    4. players will encounter two scenarios, one where they receive feedback and one where they offer feedback on a “hypothetical” peer paper.
  2. Teach strategies for soliciting better and stronger feedback from peers.
    1. players will be rewarded for pushing their “peers” to give them more critical feedback.
    2. players should be exposed to a range of student writing, from developmental writing to strong writing, the kinds of writing they will experience in their first- and second-year writing classes.
  3. Demonstrate that writing is a recursive process that is facilitated at all levels by peer review. Players should learn that there is always room for improvement and given the right information (an assignment, a grading rubric, and a draft), they can help each other, no matter their writing ability.

In short, we wanted to model successful peer review practices for students in an environment in which they were not personally invested in the writing. Since my earlier, informal research into students’ peer review fears had taught me that their attitudes varied according to their views of themselves as writers—stronger writers thinking that their groups had little to offer them while the weaker, more insecure writers feared they had little to offer the group—we wanted to create an environment for them to experience peer review safely and with little personal investment in what they often view as the ultimate outcome of the writing: the grade.