Facilitating Revision

Given resources from the instructors, CWP has found that students are more than capable of reviewing and editing their own writing. Dan Melzer’s latest research on college student writing “points to the value of shifting the focus of response from teachers to students, and from final drafts of discrete assignments to student self assessment, metacognition, and growth (p129, Melzer 2023). 

For example, in Animal Science 2111W, Drs. Spain and Birt provide their students with a checklist of required items and suggested revisions. This list was created by taking common feedback comments from the instructor on first versions of the paper and asking students to pay extra attention to common errors such as professional tone and filler words.

Access an example Self Editing Checklist to adapt to your unique assignment.

The most typical method of teaching revision is:

• The instructor responds to the writing.
• The student makes changes accordingly.
• The student returns the revised paper for either further changes or for final submission.

While not necessarily the most effective method of revision, it can be helpful in situations where time constraints prevent peer review or when the class is taught by a correspondence method (General Studies or MU Direct).

Nancy Sommers’ essay “Responding to Student Writing” offers valuable suggestions regarding instructor response and revision expectations.

Peer review is a popular method of teaching revision. Peer review is a complex process and best practiced by acknowledging that:

• In peer review, students will receive good and bad feedback; they need to make mature decisions regarding what will help them with their work.
• Peer review can be done in stages; rather than tackle everything at once, reviewers can deal with one issue at a time (content, organization, grammar).
• Peer review can be done without reading entire papers; students can focus on reading intros, sections of a paper, first halves of a paper, or some other part.
• Peer review should be guided (with rubrics, check lists, expectations, instructions) rather than a generic “swap papers” directive
• Peer review can be done by having students read each other’s work ahead of time, online, or in class while also putting comments into writing.

Other strategies:

• Have students rewrite sections of each papers. The rewrites show the original writer other possibilities the student hasn’t considered regarding content or organization.
• Have students do peer review in an online, collaborative space like a wiki.
• Have students not correct each other’s papers, but pose questions regarding what they have just read.
• Have students do research for each other; under-researched sections can be extended by students going online during class and helping the writer find additional sources and information.
• Have students reorganize each other’s work.

While not a replacement for the types of advice and critiques that can be shared in a peer review session, the oral presentation of work done or in progress also offers an opportunity for feedback.

In this model, a specific amount of time is devoted to students doing oral presentations. In a small class, this can be done over a period of 2-3 days (the time for each presentation will depend on how many students are in the class). In larger classes – where there are too many students to devote presentation time for – students could do their presentations on short videos (almost every camera and computer today comes with a video camera), upload them to YouTube, and classmates could see the presentations outside of class time.

The presentation serves a number of purposes, particularly when it precedes time devoted to peer review or some other kind of feedback on the writing itself.

• The student goes into “working” mode early (thus, reducing the opportunity for last minute work).
• The student discusses some aspect of the work—how it looks so far, what kind of obstacles she is encountering, what she is trying to do, where she is having problems, what parts so far look good—and students watching the presentation have the opportunity to offer feedback.
• The student uses the presentation as an opportunity to teach others about her work. This opportunity benefits both the presenter and the audience. The presenter receives feedback and also hears her work out loud; audience members hear how others approached the project.
• The student works in a professional moment. Presenting on works in progress in front of one’s peers or superiors is a professional experience most of us go through. By engaging with a professional experience, the work being done becomes more professional as well.
• Instructors can take notes and respond to the presentations after class via email. This way, students have instructor feedback to work with as well while they revise for a peer review session or final submission.