Benefits of Peer Response.. Why do it?

• Requires students to produce a draft before the final draft deadline – and requires them to look at it again before they turn it in. Studies show that students can catch up to 60% of their own errors – if they take the time to look at the draft and edit!
• Students will get hands on experience with what you are looking for when they must apply your criteria to other students’ drafts. When a student is required to look for the analysis section in another student’s draft, she may quickly realize that she is missing an analysis section in her own paper.
• Even in cases where students fail to give each other good feedback, they still gain something by reading other students’ drafts and seeing the choices made by other writers in the class. This addresses the tunnel vision that might occur when the student sees only his own choices as a writer: "I did what you asked…Why didn’t I get an A?"
• Prepares students for many "real world" job situations where drafts are exchanged and revised through group process. Faigley and Miller discovered that in a survey of 200 college educated professionals, 73% wrote collaboratively in their jobs.

Provide students with criteria to evaluate each other’s drafts. Criteria might cover content, structure, style, format. Get your students to pose the questions that you pose when you look at drafts:

• What is the point/thesis?
• Is it supported with analysis/evidence?
• Is it clearly laid out?

Decide in what format you want students to respond:

• A checklist
• A question and response form
• A memo to the writer of the draft

For different models on peer response...