Collaboration and Peer-Response Groups

Justine Mack

I honestly don’t enjoy collaboration activities or peer-response groups. Being a professional writing major I tend to struggle with idea of other writing majors reading my work. Often times, I lack confidence in my writing and feel other students are stronger writers than I and comparing myself to them makes me feel embarrassed. Although, I do admit there are some advantages to peer-response groups because they can provide insight into their interpretation of the assignment if it happens to be different than yours. From there you can put your heads together and gear your assignment more toward the purpose your group came up with.

I do agree with many of the points presented in the text. One statement the author said that really stuck out to me is that students who lack self-confidence are more comfortable in smaller groups. I 100% agree with that statement because I am more comfortable with the least amount of people reading my work as possible. I also agree that it is easy to get off topic of the assignment when you are in a group with your friends and you have other things to talk about because I am guilty of this. Another great point the author said is that if you are assigned the same group all semester and you are forced to have meetings outside of class the group can grow to know each other better and get more intimately which can lead to better work overall. I remember last semester I was assigned to write a blog with another student and throughout the semester we grew closer and now are really great friends and are currently taking courses together now.