is that when you don't get substantial feedback you are sort of on yr own for the revision process, but if you get a lot of good feedback, it generally means you have a lot of work ahead of you...both the mental work of sorting through the suggestions and deciding what is useful for you, and then the work of actually revising the paper based on what you decided to take to heart.
I usually hate writing workshops, which is weird, because I actually love them conceptually. I think it might just have to do with the environments I have experienced them within. Generally, I don't feel like I get substantial feedback. Rarely, I do luck out and get that attentive reader who can both see what I am trying to do and offer me ways to do it more effectively; this reader, however, always signals more work for me to do, so it is not a completely exciting experience, either. ;) I think the problem for me must just be that peer assessment/writing workshops are like taking the whole writing process and making it kind of public. I find writing really intimate, so I don't always want to share my writing with whoever is assigned to my assessment group. I do understand, however, that it is a great tool for improving writing. I also think it can make the writing process more intimate, by opening it up and having an honest, uninhibited discussion. In certain situations, it might actually extend the inherent intimacy of the writing process.
I felt like the online peer assessment method we used worked, for the most part. I felt like I was able to get a pretty decent draft turned in, although I did have to take the day off of work to do so. Initially I didn't understand some of the feedback I got from my reviewers, but at this point I have contemplated it and feel like both of them offered me some useful bits of guidance for steering my next revision. I agree with Ashley that it would really help if the forums were not closed after the deadline, especially in the peer assessment discussions but also in general. For example, maybe Alyssa or I said something to Ashley in our feedback that bothered her and it would have taken a simple back-and-forth exchange to disambiguate what we were saying. This seems pretty important; I would also be in favor of leaving them open always, because sometimes I notice a post that I should respond to a lot later, for example a professor responded to a post I made on D2L in May and I just saw it last month, a summer after the class over and I had already been graded and everything. I still responded to it, and then I e-mailed him to let him know it was there. The conversation shouldn't end just because the assignment or the unit or the class or the degree program does.
I don't think any kind of sychronous chat tool is necessary. I felt like written feedback and using notes in Word was effective for our group -- we could make notes on specific sections as we went along, and then writing out our final analysis gave us a good ability to think out our responses thoroughly. It seems better in ths kind of critical setting to have more response time, not less. :)
Well, my peers gave me a lot to think about going forward. Both of my reviewers thought I should add more summary to my paper, but I felt like both of their papers had too much summary, so I am wondering if my summary is truly not substantive enough or if this is just a sylistic difference. It is a short paper, so I would much rather focus on analysis and connecting the ideas of the authors to my personal experience. I felt like I got a lot of feedback that was interesting, but that I don't think I can act upon necessarily in such a short paper, for example, Ashley thought I should go into not only experiences from my schooling, but what approaches teachers used that produced them. It's a good thought, I'm just not sure it is necessary or possible to fit into a page of such short length.
I think the main thing is that I am attempting to write a paper that could easily be a lot longer than this assignment, so while all of the feedback I got is good, I don't feel I can successfully act on it in my revision without being way over the oage limit. I will, however, take the legitimate criticism and use it to reshape my paper in a way that makes it stronger within the framework of the assignment you gave, with it's length requirements and everything.
I love the interplay between the notions that peer assessment makes writing as a process more "public" (when it's supposed to be intimate) and, on another level, perhaps even more "intimate," as well (because one is giving and receiving feedback with such candor). And, again, I think the point of leaving the discussion forums open for all of the reasons you and others have pointed out is well-taken. (And of course I'm thrilled that students would *want* to keep talking about their drafts!)
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