Jeff and Bill took a conceptual approach that I appreciated. I’m not sure everyone in attendance was ready for their approach, as I’m sure some expected more nuts and bolts instruction to specific applications.

In the morning, we created value statements for writing programs. We began by using a heuristic to take an inventory of our writing programs, and we thought through various points e.g., infrastructure, stakeholders, that would help us create the statements. The exercise provided us with a document we used to test social peer review software called Eli that Bill and Jeff are developing at WIDE. We worked with it in the afternoon, tested it, and provided feedback. I give them credit because we worked with a test-version of their software, but the theoretical rationale they mapped out before we used it was sophisticated enough that it never seemed as if they were shilling the software, or using the institute for usability testing. The configuration of the institute provided an example of the “software is theory” motto Bill repeated a few times.

In the afternoon, Bill began by thinking through the importance of the review and teaching students how to review good writing. Citing research in professional communication, Bill claimed that as workplace writers move up the ladder in many workplaces, they often produced less writing but reviewed more writing. Both Bill and Jeff argued that time spent teaching students to review writing in class is time well spent, and their software was designed to help students review each other’s work, but it also contained features that enabled teachers to assess how helpful the students were. In other words the algorithms helped teachers assess the reviews students were doing.

I won’t spend much time talking about the software because it is going to change dramatically before it is released commercially next spring, which is the time they are aiming for. I will be trying it with my classes because all of my research thus far shows that peer review is a ubiquitous and important practice that web writers use in online networks. I also want to use and promote tools like Eli and CommentPress that continue to distribute feedback for writers throughout the curriculum and throughout peer networks. This includes of course writing classes across the curriculum staffed by WAs, but it also includes promoting student peer review in classes.

The institute had me thinking about:
the rise of peer review
how long it will take before lots of writing software appears that is *designed* by writing teachers
how much good research on writing could happen if there were more consistent funding sources
how much I love digital research that focuses on *writing*