Effective In-Class Small Group Workshops

Peer review can be a transformative learning experience for college writers. However, it can be challenging to create the right conditions and scaffolding to make this a dynamic classroom experience instead of a rote exercise. This handout, created by peer tutors in Caltech's Hixon Writing Center, offers advice to faculty who wish to utilize peer review activities in the classroom.

Why workshop?

• Starting writing earlier. A course writing workshop can incentivize students to draft a paper in advance of the final deadline.
• Identifying areas of concern early. By encouraging discussion and questions a professor can identify areas of difficulty for writers and respond to them well before the final draft is due.
• Teaching and encouraging substantive revision. Many students have not experienced an iterative writing process that includes cycles of drafting, feedback, and revision. Workshops enable writers to learn how to engage in this process.
• Encouraging students to see writing assignments as a chance to communicate. When students only get feedback from a professor, it may encourage them to see writing solely as an assessment—a way to generate their grade in the class. Sharing writing with peers allows students to experience the communicative power of writing in a different way.

Possible groups for workshops:

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Example workshop formats:

• Micro workshop (5-15 minutes)
  • Choose one very targeted aspect of a paper to explore via partner or round robin review.
• Ideas workshop (about 30 minutes)
  • An ideas workshop is about developing the topics, texts, and arguments a writer wants to investigate. Works well as a whole class in smaller classes, but can also be done in a small group. Ask students to answer 2-3 specific questions aloud about what they plan to or are writing, and have a specific, helpful way that peers can respond.
• Full-draft workshop (55-75 minutes)
  • The classic small group workshop. Students in groups of 2-4 exchange papers and read and respond to entire drafts. Provide a structured timeline for students for how to organize the time so that everyone receives ample feedback.

Choosing an approach

• Think in reverse. Consider the most important learning goal for this particular assignment, and choose the mode that seems most aligned with that goal.
• Consider timing. How long have students had the assignment, and how far ahead of the due date is the workshop? Create realistic goals both for student drafting and for post-workshop revision.
• Ask your students. Do a quick poll so that students can express a preference anonymously. Every class has a unique personality, and a poll can create some buy-in from students too.

Advice for success from the HWC peer tutors

• Be aware that peer review will be very familiar to some students and a new experience for others. Also consider that some students will be anxious about sharing work with peers.
  • "Coming from a high school that put a lot of emphasis on writing, I was very familiar with reading and discussing other students' writing. However, some students in my frosh hum had never had that experience. To have a productive review, we needed to discuss what aspects of the paper needed more feedback."
  • "I always feel uncomfortable allowing another student to read my writing. Addressing this concern upfront and providing explanations about the benefits of peer review can relieve student anxiety."
• Choose the right workshop for the timeline of the assignment.
  • "If the deadline is a week away, consider a workshop to provide feedback on outlines or the first two paragraphs of an essay. If the deadline is tomorrow, I don't want to restructure my entire argument. My focus will be on rewording or reordering sentences for clarity."
• If everyone in the class is writing on the same or very similar topics, factor that into the workshop design.
  • "Consider putting students writing about different prompts in a group together; they will likely be using different sources and might provide interesting insight to their peer review group."
  • "It can be boring to read several students' writing when they have similar evidence and theses."
• Offer scaffolding, but not too much scaffolding.
  • "The successful workshops I've experienced in the past all provided a set of guiding questions for peer reviewers to follow. These questions (summarizing thesis, paper strengths, weaknesses, etc.) helped pace the workshop."
  • "I have always gained the most from peer review when the discussion of the writing was more of a conversation. To that end, I think it's important to provide guiding questions or focus points, but the discussion of each piece of work should still be organic. When professors give a long list of questions to students, the discussion can become stagnant, with students just trying to check the boxes."
• Ask students to prepare by generating questions about their own work.
  • "It's both helpful for the writer to consider what aspects of the paper they want to work on and helpful to the rest of the group to give targeted feedback that's relevant to the writer's goals."
  • "I think it's a really important skill for students to learn how to form good questions about their own work and someone else's work. Forming questions about your own work teaches you how to look at it from a new perspective."
• Help students understand how to go beyond superficial comments—both positive and critical.
  • "In a peer review, I want my partner to challenge and strengthen my argument with their expertise in the topic. Providing questions regarding the clarity of the thesis, organization of the argument, and analysis of the sources can be essential to focusing the discussion on the ideas behind the writing rather than the construction of each sentence."
  • "I particularly value peer feedback in the form of reverse-outlining, so I know whether or not my writing clearly conveys my ideas to the reader."
  • "I value sentence- and paragraph-level feedback written on my draft because it allows me to gauge where the reader has properly understood my writing the way I had intended."
  • "I appreciate it when reviewers can tell me the weakest aspect of my writing. That way I can focus on improving the most major issue before addressing others that are perhaps less significant."
• Help students understand what to do with competing or ambiguous feedback.
  • "Ultimately, the paper belongs only to its author. Let students know that they can refuse to incorporate any peer advice they wish."
  • "It's important that students realize that peer review is not just about blindly following the advice of others - rather, its main long-term benefit comes from the self-reflection that the review sparks about their own work, enabling them to think more critically and grow as writers through the process."
  • "When I receive conflicting feedback, I find it helpful to investigate the concerns either by following up with the professor or working with HWC staff. Students should be aware of these ways to handle confusing or inconsistent feedback."