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| Peer Review (Dilbert, n.d.) |
Overall I appreciated and learned from the peer review process and case analysis within ASCI 530. It was useful to develop my final research paper in several stages, and have it peer reviewed to improve upon it with an outside perspective. We all have most likely written something knowing full well what we intended to say and believing we did. But we misstated something or didn't clarify it enough and needed a set of outside eyes to spot the mistake.
The peer review was helpful and I took many of the comments made by my two reviewers into account and they ended up in the final research paper. One of my reviewers reordered my entire introduction sections, combined paragraphs and moved ideas around. I ended up taking all the comments into account and the final introduction looked vastly different from the rough draft introduction. It ended up being organized much better, with a clearer flow between thoughts. Without the outside eyes I would not have improved this section of my paper.
Peer review, or collaborative effort, is a large part of my current job and past ones as well. Prior to going to active duty with the military I was a design engineer for Caterpillar. Any design I created would be roughed in by me to prove a concept. I would then share the idea with others asking for improvements and sustains on the design. These would be taken into account for the final version of a design, which itself was vetted by someone else to ensure accuracy and effectiveness. Designs would be constantly displayed to peers either in PowerPoint or with the CAD software projected and discussed to ensure all design requirements were met.
With the Army I fly Blackhawks. Decisions for how I will execute a flight, what to use as a VFR check point, altitudes, airspeed, approach directions, night vision device considerations, safety, fuel requirements... are all discussed at a minimum with my copilot. Many times I will discuss them with other pilots to ensure I'm not missing something. In a large mission all of the information is put into a PowerPoint and presented to many other pilots so they can vet my decisions as well. Other pilots have different experiences than I do and will normally catch something I did not think of. Their assistance ensures my success in missions.
The one suggestion I would have for this course is to split the research paper up into three parts for peer review. Currently there is a peer review for the abstract, then another for the rough draft. In both cases we had to respond to what comments we would incorporate and what would be ignored, with justifications. I would like to see this broken up into three separate peer reviews.
The first peer review would cover the abstract, as we currently do it in this course. The second would cover the first three sections of the paper; Summary, Issue or Problem and Significance of the Problem. This would focus the student on those three topics as well as giving the peer reviewer less review, allowing them to pay more attention and perhaps do more research themselves into the topic and suggest different issues or problems. The third peer review would cover Development of Alternative Actions and Recommendation. The same peer reviewer should be used and they would then look over the second peer review to see what changed, then focus their efforts on the last two sections of the paper. I believe the splitting up the work allows for more focused efforts in the details of the paper, which could then lead to a better, more professional product overall.
Reference:
Dilbert by Scott Adams (n.d.). Retrieved from http://dilbert.com/
