In the workplace, you will often share what you write with colleagues and your managers to get feedback that will help you improve your work. In this class, your classmates will play the role of your colleagues by reading and responding to your work; and you will respond in kind by reading and responding to their work.

We will follow this basic peer review process for all of the projects in the course:

• Post drafts for Project 1 in the forums by 11:55 PM on Tuesday.
• Respond to two students in the forums by 11:55 PM on Thursday.
• Revise your Project based on the feedback.

Posting Your Drafts for Project 1

1. Follow the instructions in Step 1 of How do I use Google Drive for peer review? to set up sharing permissions for your documents. You need to share your draft with “Anyone with the link” or “People at Virginia Tech with the link” so that we can read your work.

2. Go to the Project 1: Professional Biography Statement board in the forums, and start a new topic:
   • Give the topic your name or your username to help keep things organized. For instance, if I were setting up a new topic, I would name it “Traci’s Bio Statements” or perhaps “Tengrrl’s Bios.”
   • If you do not want to share your last name in the forums, change it in your Google Doc to a pseudonym. You can use a generic last name like Doe or Smith, or you can change it to Lastname.
   • Share the link to your bios in Google Docs (and About.me, if you wrote one). You can follow these instructions to make your link in the forum post clickable.
   • If you have written more than one bio, please label them so that your readers will know what they are reading (for instance, you might note one is a formal bio for the company website, and the other is an informal bio for the internal company newsletter).
   • If you have any specific concerns that you want your readers to consider, add a note on that as well.

3. Be sure to Preview your forum post to make sure everything shows up the way you want it to, and then Submit your message.

Replying to Project 1 Drafts

Next, you will reply to the posts of some of your classmates:

1. Review the instructions in Step 2 of How do I use Google Drive for peer review? to learn how to use the Comment features in Google Drive.

2. Go to the Project 1: Professional Biography Statement board in the forums, and read the drafts of at least two of your classmates and add a reply with advice and encouragement (more below).
   • Find one post that no other student has replied to (so that we can be sure everyone gets a reply).
   • Find a second post that has only one other student reply.

3. Use the Share link to go to your classmate’s draft on Google Drive and do the following:

   • Check the title of the document(s), and add a comment to tell your partner if it is clear and effective.
   • If you notice any spelling errors, punctuation errors, or typos, mark them as you read, but please focus more on the content rather than editing.
   • Add comments on the content of the draft. Comment on at least three things your classmate does well and at least three things that your classmate could improve on. It’s fine (excellent, even) to include more than the minimum number of comments. Refer to the ideas from the readings as appropriate.

4. Go back to the forums and add a reply to your classmate’s topic and add an overall comment in the forums that sums up what you thought of the bio(s) and gives your classmate some encouragement.

Reviewing the Comments You Received

Once you have finished adding comments to your classmates’ projects, return to your own draft, read the comments that your classmates have given you, and add replies as appropriate. For instance, you might thank your partner for catching an error, ask your partner for more detail on feedback you don’t understand, or share a revision and ask your partner if it is an improvement. Your goal is to reply by Friday so that your classmate can respond if you need more information.