In my education classes, my professors have always stressed the importance of the social factor of learning. Several learning theorists are also of the mentality that learning is a very socially constructed being and thus, any opportunity to work in groups is utilized. This has mainly been for peer workshops or peer reviewing. This can be a very helpful tool for learning. One good thing that I can say about peer reviewing, for me, is that it is beneficial to get someone else’s opinion on my writing and another person’s input. If I were ever stuck and needed a topic or a different direction, peer workshops usually helped me.
Being that writing is one of my favorite hobbies, however, most of the time, peer reviews were useless. I have never been one to write a “rough draft”–my rough drafts usually turn into my final drafts, the only difference being the title. With regards to the “writing process,” I usually only had one process: I wrote. This isn’t to say that peer reviewers didn’t sometimes find my typos or the occasional grammar error. Most of the time, however, my peer reviewers didn’t know much in the way of English grammar and thus were not helpful to me at all. This isn’t to say that the peer workshops in this class weren’t helpful. For the visual literacy narrative, the workshop really helped me gain focus and my group members gave me great ideas. I know that peer workshops can really help some people who need the extra push or need another helping hand or maybe just need to hear that they’re on the right track, but generally, peer workshops haven’t been helpful for me.