Overview of Online Education

You already have read Research Paper Final Paper and this will give you most of the aspects of the essay that you will look for. You can use HUMN 422’s essay grading rubric’s “activity / competencies demonstrated” as a partial guide as to categories of evaluation. You are not being asked to grade the paper, however, but only to give a formal written evaluation of it. You are to write your Peer Paper Evaluation knowing that your instructor has already read the paper. There is no need to re-state the paper’s argument as you have done in writing an annotated bibliographic reference or an abstract, but rather, your evaluation is to be primarily about describing the worth and/or problems you see in the paper as it treats its topic. You are to evaluate the argument, how the paper’s thesis is developed, and the way the paper is put together.
Your evaluation is to be submitted to your instructor only, and is not to be shared with your classmate or anyone else. By ensuring that the evaluation remains private between you and your instructor, candour should be ensured. Your classmate’s paper will have been graded prior to you submitting your evaluation, and what you write has no bearing on your classmate’s grade.
Keep in mind that it is the paper that you are to objectively evaluate, and not the author, whose name will be removed before you get the paper in any case. All of the insights and opinions that you offer in your Peer’s Paper Evaluation are to exhibit the same high standards for objectivity as was required for essays. The text of your Peer’s Paper Evaluation is to be 500 words, +/- 20 words. Do not count any reference citations you may use in your word count.
Finally, when scholars use the term ‘critique’ or “critical evaluation” - what your Peer’s Paper Evaluation is to be - this does not mean that your evaluation is meant to be ‘critical’ in the common pejorative sense of the word. What it means is that you need to use what you write to explore the findings and arguments of your fellow-student’s paper. You are to create an intellectual dialogue between the essay and your Peer Student Evaluation. As in the writing of your own essay, you will be asking the question, “is this true”, “is this proven”, and “what other things should be considered?”