A Writing Community: Writing Center Directors Teach Effective Peer Review for the Classroom

Many instructors rely on student writing to assess content knowledge of a course but do not have the time to teach writing; additionally, instructors who teach Gen Ed Communications Intensive courses might wonder how to teach learning outcomes tied to written and oral communication. With guidance and mentoring, students can be effective at helping each other achieve these learning outcomes. In this presentation, USU Writing Center directors will discuss how to incorporate peer review to engage both the student writer and the peer reviewer in the conventions of writing in a particular discipline, a process which can increase learning for students who experience the iterative, collaborative process of working on writing and decrease the feedback load for instructors. Attendees will receive multiple models of peer review to work with nearly any assignment, as well as strategies for where and when to incorporate peer review in the syllabus