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Peer editing

To get the students used to the cooperative approach to writing used in industry, we have them read and comment on drafts of each other's papers on almost every assignment. We spend six or seven of the 29 available lecture times on peer editing, and the instructors circulate around the room during the peer editing answering questions and assisting with the editing.

We have tried two approaches to peer editing: having students work closely with a partner on the editing, and anonymous peer editing, where the students pick an unlabeled draft at random to comment on. Both approaches work well, though there is a tendency for same-language students to work together when partners are chosen, resulting in considerably less feedback about language-specific problems with English as a second language.

On one assignment this year, we tried having students take the drafts home over the weekend and e-mail comments to the author. This produces much less useful comments than the in-class peer editing.


karplus@cse.ucsc.edu
Fri Jan 6 10:46:24 PST 1995