Peer reviews are designed to help you improve your ability to evaluate and critique your own work, while providing a classmate with suggestions and criticisms which may help him or her produce a more effective project. Please follow these instructions while completing your peer review.
You, your partner, and I should all get a copy of your review. (Your reviewer needs a copy, obviously, and I need one for grading. You should keep one to help with review of your own work.) So, it's best for you to type up your critique. If you want to mark up pages, you'll need to make photocopies.
You should strive to be as specific as possible in your review. For example, instead of "Good," say "This paragraph is well organized" or "I like your choice of words." Instead of "This page is ugly," you should say, "Your colors clash here" or "You should try to coordinate your colors better—changing the red to a dark blue would help."
Read, look at, and work through the project you are reviewing. This may take a while if it's a pretty extensive hypertext. Click through as many of the pages as you can, and familiarize yourself with the work.
Look at the project a second time, noting any technical problems as you re-read it. Note also any serious mistakes in linguistic correctness (punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc).
Go back to the first page of the project and begin to work through it a third time, making comments as you go. You should make a comment on nearly every part of the project. Some things to address (this is by no means an inclusive list):
Does the project follow the assignment? (This is critical—you may want to note this before you start a page-by-page review. Compare to the assignment sheet.)
Is the overall design and organization of the project appropriate for the intended audience and assignment? What about the design works well?
Is most of the project understandable without explanation? Highlight any features of the writing or design which seem to work pretty well, or which are somewhat hard to understand.
Is the project organized? Does the organizational structure seem appropriate for the content of the project?
Does the visual style, including the images selected, seem appropriate? Do you think the principles of Web design are followed well? Why or why not?
For each comment you make:
Explain the reasoning behind your comment.
If you are identifying a problem. propose a method of improvement. Cite class discussions or an online reference, if possible.
End the review with several paragraphs (at least a half page of writing which comments on the project as a whole—what things work well, what could be improved, etc.
Please send a copy of your critique to me as well as to the person you are
critiquing.