The Role of Peer and Tutor Feedback (critical reflection)

Throughout the process of this course, peer evaluation has been constantly incorporated into the curriculum through the use of peer editing groups, blogging comments, and general feedback and evaluations.The class has been encouraged to participate in mutual peer evaluation by how our tutor organises us into groups and forces us to grade each other. The value of feedback is critical because it helps us to gain new insights and perspectives towards our writing, as well as to help us recognise and correct our mistakes. This serves as a guide and leads to a general improvement. Thus, it is beneficial for academic purposes.


On the surface level, peer evaluation helps us to spot our superficial errors such as errors in language use, or those in coherence and thesis writing, which can help us to improve our writing. These are things that would have been difficult to spot on our own due to our biased perspective during the writing. For example, during the essay-writing exercise on the digital divide, my first draft had a weak thesis and lacked sufficient explanations about the problem. Instead, I merely jumped straight and focused more on the present available solutions and evaluating them. This had led to a slightly incoherent and unsubstantial writing, which I would not have noticed if my classmate did not evaluate and point it out to me. By working along such feedback, I am able to review my essay and make necessary changes, improving on my writing. In the long term, this will aid my writing skills as well because I am learning from my mistakes, which I would not have realised was occurring if I was not given feedback by either my peers or tutors. On a deeper level, peer and tutor feedback can sometimes offer us new insights due to the varied opinions and perspectives towards certain issues, which can broaden our scope of writing and adopt a more accurate, balanced point of view. This helps us in the construction of our arguments (and counter-arguments) which improves our general writing capability as well.


Similarly, as we evaluate our own peers, it enhances our analytical and critical thinking ability to accurately sieve out common mistakes and this is often re-enhanced into our own writing. For example, making special effort to notice what kind of language errors are present in a classmate's work would help us to be cautious with similar language errors during our own writing as well. Through mutual evaluation, the ideas and skills of writing are being mutually reinforced, which is largely beneficial. Thus, in conclusion, peer and tutor feedback serves as a form of guide towards our writing, either in improvement or to stay on track, and is thus of value and should be taken positively.