Online Peer Review in Writing Intensive Courses
Submission Type
20-minute Presentation
Abstract
An important development of P331 Advanced Experimental Physics in the last three years is to use the “workshop” function of Moodle to set up an online manuscript submission and review system that resembles the real journal paper submission and review process in physics. This online system has many advantages, including the anonymous peer review process, high efficiency for assigning review tasks, automatic numerical grading, and convenient statistics analysis. This online manuscript submission and review system is a powerful pedagogical tool for designing progressive writing assignments, providing students explicit grading rubrics, and integrating peer instructions.
Start Date
5-24-2018 9:20 AM
Description
In this presentation, a newly developed online manuscript submission and review system for an advanced laboratory and writing intensive course will be shared. P331 Advanced Experimental Physics is a laboratory course that consists of set-piece experiments as well as directed experimental projects to study a variety of physics phenomena. It is also a Writing Intensive Courses for Physics Majors at Bryn Mawr College. Two journal papers in the format in the style of Physical Review Letters, the flagship journal of the American Physical Society are required in this course. The typical final length of such a paper is 4-5 typeset pages and is the equivalent of approximately 25 pages of writing including multiple draft iterations. Since the spring of 2015, an online manuscript submission and review system based on the “workshop” function of Moodle has been implemented in this class.
Peer instruction is an important pedagogical method implemented in this course. Each journal paper goes through 3 drafts. Students are paired up to edit their first draft in a class session, and they modify and critique each other’s work as collaborators in a real research team project do. Based on the peer editing results, students improve their manuscripts and generate the 2nd draft of the paper, and then submit their 2nd draft of the manuscript to the online Moodle manuscript submission and review system. All the submitted manuscripts are reviewed anonymously by three other students and the instructor. Both numerical scores and narrative comments are provided according to the grading rubrics. This review process greatly resembles the real journal paper review process in the physics society. After the peer review process, each student has a one-on-one meeting with the instructor to discuss their writing. In the end, students improve their 2nd draft and submit the final manuscript to Moodle. Through this peer editing and peer review process, students have the opportunities to apply the grading rubrics on other’s work and learn how to write better by critiquing each other’s work.
This online system has many advantages, including the anonymous peer review process, high efficiency for assigning review tasks, automatic numerical grading, and convenient statistics analysis. This online manuscript submission and review system is a powerful pedagogical tool for designing progressive writing assignments, providing students explicit grading rubrics, and integrating peer instructions.
Online Peer Review in Writing Intensive Courses
An important development of P331 Advanced Experimental Physics in the last three years is to use the “workshop” function of Moodle to set up an online manuscript submission and review system that resembles the real journal paper submission and review process in physics. This online system has many advantages, including the anonymous peer review process, high efficiency for assigning review tasks, automatic numerical grading, and convenient statistics analysis. This online manuscript submission and review system is a powerful pedagogical tool for designing progressive writing assignments, providing students explicit grading rubrics, and integrating peer instructions.
Comments
This can also be a sharing for 5-min lightning rounds.