In preparation for the next round of peer reviews, I created groups within Bb for each tutor and their students on Monday. I did an analysis of the previous peer review forum and saw that many students did not get any peer reviews at all. Some got only one review (they were supposed to give and get two), and two students got more than seven reviews. Most students did the required two reviews. Some students did more than the requirement. A few didn’t do any reviews at all, which violates Jolemore’s Golden Peer Review Rule: “Give the same number of reviews unto others as ye would have them give unto you.” I made a point of relating this information to my students in my Monday announcements. I hoped that smaller groups would encourage students to give more reviews. They wouldn’t be able to hide their lack of participation in a smaller crowd.
On Wednesday, when I arrived at the writing center, things were pretty busy, so I worked one on one with each tutor. I explained the writing assignment for that week, showed them how the groups feature works, went over the peer reviews guidelines, and gave them the due dates for each phase of the drafting and revision process. I felt comfortable with their understanding of how everything worked in my class, now that they had gone through a full cycle of peer reviews. I was hoping that the following week, we would be able to get several peer reviews done without too much trouble.
