Peer review seems like a great way to get students directly involved in the feedback loop, help their fellow classmates, and also save us some valuable comment writing time. But, we also know that it rarely, if ever, works the way it’s supposed to: students often aren’t able to offer constructive critique to one another and instead resort to congratulating each other on work well done (deserved or not) or (sometimes incorrectly) editing grammar and punctuation. Dr. Leah Schweitzer will talk about the reasons why students struggle with peer review as well as provide some ideas for a structured peer review that will allow students to more effectively help one another.
Join Chris Foss (English) and Virginia Mackintosh (Psychological Sciences) for an hour-long conversation around Simi Linton’s essay “Reassigning Meaning” and, in particular, a communal consideration of the ways in which this piece (the original version of which was published 25 years ago now) does or does not still resonate with our own senses of how the language we use to refer to disability presents us with affirmative, ambiguous/ambivalent, and/or pejorative possibilities for how we perceive our bodies, our minds, ourselves—and, perhaps even more importantly, for how we perceive those of others.
The discussion will take place from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Combs 139 on Wednesday, October 4. Coffee/tea provided will be available in the lobby area prior to the discussion.
This event is a part of Disability Awareness Month celebrations sponsored by the James Farmer Multicultural Center.
We will talk about strategies to make your feedback on assignments (focused on writing, but applicable to many kinds of assignments) more effective by considering them as a genre that students have to be taught to read, interpret, and apply. Dr. Leah Schweitzer will take you through a bit of theory and scholarship behind to give a sense of how she approaches providing effective feedback and then move on to practical ways of framing and scaffolding feedback. Finally, she will share activities you can do with or assign to students to help them more effectively implement your suggestions.