Peer Review Groups - Working Model
What are Peer Review Groups?
Peer Review Groups (PRGs) are small groups of 5-8 graduate students in similar disciplines who meet once weekly to review each other’s scholarly communication. PRGs are a unique space to workshop academic communication and progress on work. We provide feedback on work at any stage of the writing process: brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing.
Why should I join a Peer Review Group?
PRGs provide an opportunity to help graduate students become acculturated to providing and receiving feedback on academic communication. Members benefit not only receiving feedback on their own work, but also from providing feedback to other members and acting as a critical reader. We balance constructive and kind feedback that leads to productive revisions.
Critical evaluation of peer work is a valuable and necessary skill even beyond graduate school as students progress into their careers in academia or industry. To this end, in our PRGs, we review any academic genre, both written and oral, including, but not limited to:
- Research articles
- Review papers
- Theses, dissertations, and creative components
- Conference presentations and posters
- Job application materials
- Grant proposals
Our groups are inclusive spaces and we welcome writers from any discipline, graduate program, and language background. We believe that everyone has the ability to provide a meaningful reader’s perspective.
How can I join a Peer Review Group?
Given the demand, we offer discipline-specific and interdisciplinary PRG, depending on the interest in a given semester. Groups are formed at the beginning of the semester by the PRG Coordinator and facilitated by trained CCE writing consultants. PRGs are not a class nor a scheduled writing time, but instead, a scheduled review time.
Video Introduction to the Peer Review Groups
- Expectations - 2:22
- How it Works - 3:54
- Calendar - 4:46
- Basics for Writers - 5:57
- When Presenting - 9:39
- Other Tips for Writers - 11:01
- Reviewing - 12:06
- Reviewer Benefits - 14:15
- Joining a Group - 15:23
Demo of a peer review
This is a clip from one of our graduate peer review groups. Before this point, the writer has introduced her work, asked for specific feedback, and then read a section of the paper aloud to the group. In this clip, you can see the interdisciplinary group negotiating the meaning of her writing and options for revision. The group discusses potential revision ideas, explains them and the writer can choose to make revisions to her work in real-time or add comments to look at a section later. You can see there are no printed copies, only to projected copy so that everyone stays on the same page, quite literally.
Note: You may need to turn up the volume or use headphones given the low volume on the video.