Peer Review: Let Your Friends Judge You...In a Helpful Way!

The last couple weeks in class have been rather vulnerable. I will not lie. When my professor first mentioned to our 5305 class about posting everything we had so far for our classmates to go through I may have let out a few not so appropriate words and was thankful I was not on camera... I worked diligently to make sure that I had made enough headway on my final projects to post them so people had something to look at. Then the next week the process was repeated for 5303. I was not as nervous and maybe even a little bit excited. I will detail some of my thoughts below.

It was scary... at first.

I definitely had a moment of panic. I was not very far along in any of my projects and while I know she said to post what we had so far, I did not 1. want to let others know how far behind I was, and 2. miss out on the opportunity to get this feedback from my peers. However, I was still not sure that I was really understanding the assignments so it is vulnerable to put yourself out there, and also to give others feedback when you're not quite sure of yourself either. But as you start to receive feedback and look at others, you realize, "Hey, we are all in this together." And really, we all want each other to win.

It was also a little frustrating...

After I worked hard most of the week to have something to show for myself I posted my work on the intended timeline. I found that there were not a lot of classmates that followed the directions. Now these were not hard deadlines, so it was not like people necessarily missed the deadline, but I was expecting to be greeted with the same amount of hard work that I had put in and to be able to finish my feedback, and I really wasn't able to. This also gave me an opportunity to exercise grace and empathy. Something that is paramount in the education field (Efilti & Gelmez, 2024, p. 824).

But it was mostly very helpful...

The process really allowed me to take hold of a Growth Mindset and not be afraid of what others might say, but really embrace the power of the more knowledgeable other. This process is two fold. First, you gain insight from looking at other's work. And second, it is extremely helpful to have others put their eyes on your work. It has been proven that we do not see all the errors in our work. In fact, one of my classmates caught a couple of grammatical errors that left me feeling a little silly, but then I remembered that it it is neurologically impossible for us to catch all of our own errors.

By the end, it had a positive outcome...

Growth Mindset is known to have positive academic outcomes (Regional Educational Laboratory West, et. al., 2017, p.3). When we were given the second discussion assignment for peer feedback I was not really that concerned and maybe even a little excited to collaborate with my peers. It was fun to see how others were displaying their work and get ideas from just viewing their portfolios. I received some great feedback on how to upgrade this website and immediately implemented the changes. I hope that they are helpful to help visitors navigate and find what they are looking for. There are people in this class that are further along on their ADL journey and I definitely respect that and am so grateful for their experiences and how those have shaped their ePortfolios. I'm becoming a little more comfortable with Wix and am thankful for the others in my class that were able to offer up advice to help shape my corner of the internet!

Efilti, P, & Gelmez, K. (2024). A deep dive into the impacts of empathy on design learning and reaching. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 34(2), 809–852. https://doi-org.libproxy.lamar.edu/10.1007/s10798-023-09835-9