Rule 1 for Giving Feedback: Help your classmates see what is clear to you and what isn’t. What are the strongest and most compelling things in their ideas, and what could you use help in understanding?
Rule 2 for Giving Feedback: Be generous with your feedback! The more questions you can ask your classmates and the more details you can help them think of, the more helpful you will be! Help them become clearer and more specific.
Rule 1 for Getting Feedback: When receiving feedback, your classmates will sometimes ask questions that you already know the answer to. This is an important thing to note because it means that this is necessary information you haven’t communicated yet and need to find a way to do so.
Rule 2 for Getting Feedback: When receiving feedback, your classmates may also ask questions that you don’t know the answer to. This is also important to note because it helps you see gaps that you will need to address or clarify your focus.
After reading your classmate’s paper, write down answers to the following questions and share them with your classmate:
1) Identify Who/What/Where/When the paper is about. Is their research about a specific performance, performer, play, film, time period, style, etc.?
2) When and where did their research topic happen? How does the historical or geographical context frame this paper’s topic?
3) What did you learn from reading this paper? How do you view this topic differently after reading this paper?
4) What is the main argument?
5) Does the structure of the paper support the argument or address the research question? Is anything missing? Does anything seem extraneous?
6) What are some genuinely good counterarguments that you can think of for this paper’s argument? What are some plausible seeming answers to the questions that they pose? Do they address these counterarguments or questions in the course of the paper? When an argument can address good counterarguments or answer a question which seems at first glance to have multiple plausible answers, it becomes much stronger!
7) When you were reading the paper, did you get confused at any point? Did you have to stop and look something up? Did you encounter information late in the paper and think it might be useful to have known it earlier?
8) Take a look at the sources that your classmate cites. Do you understand why they are being used and how they support the paper’s argument?
9) What kinds of primary sources are they using and how are they using them?
10) Do the secondary sources seem like they come from reliable scholarly sources? Do you understand how they support or frame the paper’s argument? Are you always clear on what is being cited when?