Commenting Review Week 8

Image: A Beautiful Canvas of an Enchanted Forest

(Unfortunately, I don't know the source...)

I think I am making good connections with other students through the blogs. The assignments requiring longer, analytical comments are extremely insightful. I personally think there should be more of them!


The interactions that appear to facilitate better connections in an online class usually consist of: forcing each student to peer review other students’ works analytically, but not chock the schedule too much full of analysis to take up too much of the students’ time to where they can’t have creative projects/interactions with each other. Good analysis requires enough time and effort to be worthwhile, and I think this class’s set-up accommodates analysis and creativity (for those people without already horrendous schedules).


Project comments I received have been useful so far: some I agree with, some I do not. However, I still maintain consideration even for the ones I don’t agree with, because they offer a perspective that I haven’t contemplated before.


When leaving a short comment on a fellow student’s narrative post, I usually focus on thematic and stylistic aspects that I think could make their stories richer and more imaginatively fruitful. I find it hard to just say an entire 60 words that could be summarized with “I liked your story a lot!”, and I take the consideration to make sure that whatever I leave on someone’s post will give them an opinion that they can take something from, even if they don’t totally agree with me.


In revising my writing, I use suggestions from the comments experimentally: if something didn’t work in a previous story that I wrote and someone brought it up in a comment, I will usually make the change that the comment suggested in a future narrative post.

If I had any suggestions for improving the commenting component of this class, they would be 1) that encouragement of analysis in all commenting assignments was present, 2) that not just technical aspects of other’s writing should be considered, but themes and style should be explored too, and 3) that there should even be assignments about critiquing other students’ comments in order to make sure that the quality of comments is maintained.