Today, we had our first peer review day in my English Composition class. Typically, I try to have the students grade a sample paper using my rubric to get their hands dirty and then use the insights they make from that exercise to look at their own drafts and the drafts of their classmates with fresh eyes.
But before the game is the game. They need to know what good feedback looks like before they can provide it.
For the past couple of years, I’ve given my students Seth Godin’s post on giving feedback as a conversation starter. While his piece is more about giving feedback in the context of a business or corporate environment, it’s all the more powerful for that reason. It lets my students know that the ability to offer quality feedback is not just something they need to be able to do in a classroom. It’s something that will serve them well in their careers and lives.
Godin gives three pieces of advice…
- Offer analysis, not opinions.
- This one is difficult since the gap between opinions and analysis is a hazy one. Just think of the current cultural debate about facts and truth. Godin’s point is that there’s a difference in making a statement about taste and offering feedback rooted in evidence. “I don’t like this article” is an opinion. “I don’t like the way that the article never explains what Jim Crow is, even though that term is part of its main argument” is analytical. “I don’t like this author’s style” is an opinion. “Because the author keeps burying key sentences in the middle of paragraphs, it’s difficult to tell how the essay is organized” is analysis. The gist here is that we can have change-producing conversations about things we analyze in a way we can’t about things that are merely opinion or taste. The more we veer towards taste, the more likely we are to hit bedrock commitments that someone cannot or will not change. Good feedback should encourage revision, not get the writer to double-down on the original version. Knowing the difference between analysis and opinion clarifies that difference.
- Say the right things at the right time.
- The minor errors in a paper are often the easiest to pick up on. The heading doesn’t fit with MLA format because the author should have put the professor’s name second instead of third. There’s an apostrophe missing in the third paragraph. These are worthwhile things to point out, but they are also the last things that should get a reviser’s attention. Great. You picked up that the header was off, but did you notice and comment on the fact that the paper contained no direct quotations, something any good rhetorical analysis should have? That’s what this author needs to improve. It will take 10 seconds to edit the header. It will take 30 minutes to review the text and figure out what direct quotations best fit the analysis that’s already here. Know what stage of the process you’re in and offer feedback accordingly.
- If you have something nice to say, say it.
- Offer positive feedback now, not when everything is perfect or (even worse) not at all because you have the mistaken notion that feedback must always be critical. Your commitment to saying something nice establishes community. I’m not looking to destroy your paper. I see how good it is now, and I want it to be as good as it can be.
In class, I gave students a chance to practice #3 by giving them time to send an email to someone at the university who had done something worthwhile for them in the first three weeks of the semester: a professor, an RA, a coach, someone in the caf. As I told them in class, they had take five minutes and made someone’s entire day. What I pray is that they will internalize this impulse and follow through on it the next time they see or experience something positive.
But all of this remains academic. All I’ve done at this point is put Godin’s business advice into the context of a freshman course.
What of discipleship?
As we help others grow in their faith, this approach to giving feedback should lead to these questions.
- Is my feedback rooted in evidence—from tradition, from reason, from love, and (most importantly) from the word of God? If not, why am I sharing it?
- When is the right time to share what I have to say? What demands feedback now? What can wait?
- How can I build up the body of Christ? Who can I encourage?
I offer these questions as provocations because I don’t feel competent enough to order prescriptive practices here. If only sanctification had a 25-point rubric that we could work through as a church body! On second thought, that’s a horrible idea! Thank you for grace, Jesus, and for the chance to learn and grow by thinking with one another as a body, even if that growth requires some pain.