Revision Strategy

The peer review process is more than just a process. Reviewing my peers' work this time around involved more in depth commentary and analyzing the essay at a closer look by rating the paper's strengths and weaknesses on a scale. My other experiences in peer review was almost purely verbal and involved much less of the detail this assignment required us to do.

I learned that by giving advice, I immediately thought of the flaws that were in my own essay and as I was revising my own essay, I noticed that what I had pointed out in my peers' work needed attention in my own essay. In addition, giving advice solidified my understanding of a specific part of the paper that we were expected to fulfill. For instance, I commented on one paper that stating that an experiment was conducted by researchers was not enough. The methodology needed to be explained and the procedures should have been made a note of because this could affect how the conclusion was interpreted. Interestingly enough, someone else in my group commented the exact same thing, signifying that I truly did understand what I was missing and how to fix that specific part.

Another common piece of advice I had gotten from my peers was to better the transitions between each paragraph because they were all very choppy and did not flow well. I did not get the chance to fix this yet because I was prioritizing understanding what the actual article was about. Thus, I did not attempt to put in transitions and simply summarized the article in order to gain a better understanding first. I also needed visual elements, but I did not have the time to incorporate them into my essay.

I had thought that my introduction was fine, but I realize now that I should focus on giving a historical overview of my topic. I briefly mentioned people who did work in the past, but this was very superficial. I thought that my explaining of the the articles was superficial but no one in my group pointed it out except for the instructor. My perception was not that far off from my reviewers. It was clearly not well developed but both parties agreed on that. I was about right in my perception.

My plan for the HCP involves going back to the articles themselves and making sure to include key authors that played an important part of the topic and addressing the things that they did was connecting it to other researchers' work. I will find another research article and replace one that my instructor thought was not good enough. Keywords include "research", "pig", "swine", and "intelligence/cognition".

Three revisions include rewriting my body paragraphs so that they flow well, describing the methodolgy and results of the experiments, and incorporating multi-modal elements. Other things I will work on is my introduction, citing more often, and incorportaing visual elements.