Instructions for Peer Volunteers:

Students may offer to be Peer Volunteers at the beginning of the semester, or during the semester if the Instructor requests more Peer Volunteers from one particular class.

In return for a relaxed attendance policy (no maximum number of absences) and exemption from turning in the in-class exercises you may miss, a Peer Volunteer's job will be to briefly respond on Facebook to at least 7 to 14 other students' weekly blog postings (assignments under Facebook Notes) every week. The students' work you review should be from another class hour. In order to do their job properly, Peer Volunteers need to send Facebook friend requests to all members of the other class. 

This reviewing and responding should never take more than 3 hours a week, probably less. In reviewing other students' postings you must always be courteous and strictly follow the instructions shown below. You do nobody any good by making lightweight or fluff comments like "This is great," or "Super" without going into detail, but never attack a student's posting either!  If you must make negative comments, do so by Facebook message, not an open posting that anyone can read.

Responses should be about 4 sentences or more in length, well thought out, and should answer the following:

• Originality: Is the student's writing original and interesting, or just boring?  Why?

• Quality: Is the blog assignment appropriately completed? Is the overall design of the posting adequate?

• Quantity: Is there enough of it? Is it too short?

Is there too much superfluous verbiage that obscures the central point?

• Readability: Is there a way to improve the student's posting?

Peer Volunteers still have to turn in all their own regular blog postings, plus, most importantly, all the major class assignments!  Peer Volunteers participate with their project collective on the Collaboratory assignment.

Anyone who no longer wishes to be a Peer Volunteer can resume regular class participation with regular attendance rules at any time. 

Any Peer Volunteer who falls behind on regular assignments or on peer responses, or who makes discourteous or nonprofessional comments on a peer response will be automatically returned to regular class status.

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How to respond to other students' writing:

"The first rule is to be courteous.  Never write scathing, destructive responses that serve no constructive purpose. 'Write the review as if you were writing it to yourself,' says Iain Taylor, professor of botany at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver and assistant editor-in-chief of NRC Research Press. A good peer reviewer makes specific, useful comments on the [assignment's] presentation and pitfalls. As Taylor tells students in an annual series of workshops at UBC on writing, revision, and peer-reviewing ... papers, a good peer reviewer is a 'consultant--not a judge, jury, and executioner!'"

"Learning how to be an effective peer-review consultant takes time, however, and Taylor tells Next Wave that it is never too early for students ... to get their 'feet wet' with the review process. 'It isn't only the ability to recognize when a paper is well written, but the entire revision process that can be a valuable experience for young researchers,' says Taylor."

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The contents of your response will vary tremendously depending on the quality and importance of the student's work. But every Peer Volunteer's response should contain the answers to four questions:

• Originality: Is the student's work original and interesting, or just boring?  Why?

• Quality: Is the assignment appropriately completed? Is the overall design of the posting adequate?

• Quantity: Is there enough of it? Is it too short?

Is there too much superfluous information presented which obscures the central point?

• Readability: Is there a way to improve the student's posting?

Be a good peer reviewer--it will help your own learning. Be as honest and constructive as you can--remember what it's like to receive negative comments, and the context in which they are made. Appreciate the help you get when your assignments are carefully and helpfully reviewed, and try to do the same for other students!

Quoted and adapted for undergraduate use from "Peer Review Techniques for Novices," by Lesley McKarney http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2001_04_20/noDOI.5045631236818121057

For educational purposes only!