Offers a thorough look at peer review in virtual environments.

In a reassessment of peer review practices, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch explores how computer technology changes our understanding of this activity. She defines "virtual peer review" as the use of computer technology to exchange and respond to one another's writing in order to improve it. Arguing that peer review goes through a remediation when conducted in virtual environments, the author suggests that virtual peer review highlights a unique intersection of social theories of language and technological literacy.

In "Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers", 24 college educators focus on the most important questions to be addressed by all scholar-teachers and administrators committed to developing high-quality online education programs. We describe these questions as "global" because they transcend the particular situations of individual institutions. They are questions that everyone involved in online education needs to address: What are the issues to consider when first developing and then sustaining an online education program? How do we create interactive, pedagogically sound online courses and classroom communities? How should we monitor and assess the quality of online courses and programs? And how should recent developments and innovations in online education cause us to reexamine our roles and responsibilities as educators in technical communication?While these global questions affect all of us in one way or another, they demand different local answers, such as those presented by the contributors to this text. Readers will need to consider which of these local answers might apply to their own situations and how these answers might need to be adapted to reflect the particular needs of their own institutions.

The following is a public-facing thesis project. It includes three main components that function as a professional teaching portfolio and materials for future academic work. First, the course design article is a proposal for a first-year writing course at the University of Wyoming. The course emphasizes utilizing peer review to facilitate online learning communities. The course design article does not follow the conventions of a traditional article, rather it employs the genre conventions of a course design article and includes a course description, institutional context, theoretical rationale, critical reflection, and syllabus. Second, the community college application materials are useful to my future career aspirations and include a teaching philosophy, cover letter, and curriculum vitae. Third, the book review is an examination of Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about Writing in Online Environments. While this project is separated into three distinct sections, each section is related in topic or purpose.

This book grows out of the insights and proficiencies gained through teaching undergraduate and graduate students in onsite, online, and blended formats for almost three decades. Using a practitioner focus, it proffers best practices utilized and validated during the process of successfully instructing students in writing their scientific or technical proposals, professional or business reports, and academic papers or doctoral dissertations at premier American universities. The book guides facilitators through syllabus creation, discussion management, and open educational resources use, while specifically offering strategies and support to the underserved online writing teachers who utilize multimedia materials and virtual discussions in learning management systems to reach out to students. Also, insider insights and specialist knowledge on using visual creation tools and open educational resources are shared. The text is a must-have handbook for undergraduate and graduate teachers, and particularly fills the need for a helpful sourcebook for remote teaching in a post-COVID world.

Student-led peer review can be a powerful learning experience for both giver and receiver, developing evaluative judgment, critical thinking, and collaborative skills that are highly transferable across disciplines and professions. Its success depends on purposeful planning and scaffolding to promote student ownership of the process. With intentional and consistent implementation, peer review can engage students in course content and promote deep learning, while also increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of faculty assessment.Based on the authors’ extensive experience and research, this book provides a practical introduction to the key principles, steps, and strategies to implement student peer review – sometimes referred to as “peer critique” or “workshopping”. It addresses common challenges that faculty and students encounter. The authors offer an easy-to-follow and rigorously tested three-part protocol to use before, during, and after a peer review session, and advice on adapting each step to individual courses.The process is applicable across all disciplines, content types, and modalities, face-to-face and online, synchronous and asynchronous. Instructors can guide students in peer review in one course, across two or more courses that are team-taught, or across programs or curriculums. When instructors, students, and university stakeholders create a culture of peer review, it enhances learning benefits for students and allows faculty to share pedagogical resources.Student peer review is a high-impact pedagogy that’s easily implemented, inculcates lifelong learning skills in students, and relieves the assessment burden on faculty as students collaborate to improve their own work.

This study compares the impact of "open" and "anonymous" peer feedback as an adjunct to teacher-mediated feedback in a digital online environment utilising data gathered on an academic writing course at a Turkish university. Students were divided into two groups with similar writing proficiencies. Students peer reviewed papers either anonymously or openly, then resubmitted them. The lecturer provided feedback and students again resubmitted their assignments. Finally, students submitted a reflection paper on how or whether they benefited from both peer and teacher-mediated feedback. Findings provide evidence for the positive contribution of multiple anonymous peer feedback in a digital online environment towards improved academic writing skills. [For the complete volume, "Innovative Language Teaching and Learning at University: Enhancing Participation and Collaboration," see ED565011.].