So, in this next module, I'm going to be giving a little bit of a tutorial to tell
you how to approach the upcoming writing and editing assignments.
If you are planning on participating in these, which is, of course, highly
recommended. It would be, really helpful to watch this.
Especially for how to do the peer editing. We're going to use some conventions on
doing the peer editing. So take a few minutes and watch this.
So you have a paper due on Sunday night at eleven:555 p.m.
I am going to stress that you have to get this paper done in time if you want to
participate in the peer editing. The way the system works if your paper is
not in on time it will not be distributed to the peer editor.
So, so please get your paper in on time for this assignment. the peer editing, by
the way, is a huge part of this course. You will learn a ton from having to edit
your peer's work. It will give you a chance to practice all
the things I've been talking about in this course.
So please try to get your paper in on time so you can participate in that.
So just a quick review of the paper topic I posted.
You have three choices. You can summarize a hot paper in your
research field or if you want, you can also summarize a classic paper.
So that's pretty straight forward. You could also write a book review.
This will require, of course, that you read a book and I'm asking you to write a
book review about a nonfiction science or social science book so that it involves
some original research. In all of these paper topics I want you to
have to describe some original scientific or social science research.
So write a book review as if you would for, like, the New York Times.
And then the third topic would be to write a profile of a scientist.
And so that would involve you actually going out and interviewing someone.
It can be a fellow student, it can be a colleague, it can be a professor if he'll,
if they've got time for you to interview them.
It has to be somebody who's doing some original research, again, so that you have
the opportunity to describe some original either scientific or social science
research. Now the paper has to be less than 500
words long, so that's pretty short. That's gonna force you to practice writing
in that kind of concise style that we've been talking about in this course.
So those are your choices. A number of you have asked me about, you
know, turning in a part of a manuscript that you're working on.
That, you can do for the second paper topic.
So, when the second paper assignment comes up, I will have some choices that allow
you to, to hand in pieces of original manuscripts you're working on.
But for this paper topic, I want you to write something new.
So, these are your choices. And just to go over how the grading is
going to work. So you're going to hand in your paper,
it's going to be reviewed by five peer reviewers, so you're going to get five
sets of grades. You're also going to get five.
Edited versions of your paper. So your peer reviewers are not only gonna
assess your paper, but they're also going to give you an edited copy.
So you're gonna see how, where they came up with you know, where they found places
that needed to be worked on. You're gonna get five sets of grades from
your peer reviewer's. I'm gonna go ahead and just throw out the,
the peer reviewer who, who graded you the lowest.
I'm gonna throw that out. That will allow for if there's any you
know. Problems with the peer review process
where people aren't taking the peer review process seriously.
Just in case, hopefully everybody will take it seriously.
But, just in case, I will throw out the lowest set of grades.
So you'll be, your, your top four set of grades will be averaged.
And you will scored on, and, of course, you will be scoring your peers on.
On a scale of, starting at three and going down to zero.
So three is really gonna be for the most outstanding papers.
The top twenty%. So about one in five papers.
So if they did a really, really good job on the particular category, you can score
them as a three. If they did a good job but they have some
weaknesses in that particular category. Kind of more of an average, they're kind
of average in the group. That would be scored as a two.
One point would indicate kind of substantial weaknesses in a given area.
That they really struggle with that particular category.
And then he would give them a zero if they just handed in an essay that wasn't
complete. That is, they had an unfinished paper or
if you suspected that there was plagiarism going on, and You know, obviously if it's
plagiarized it's going to get a zero. You may not be aware if it's plagiarized
but if you have an inkling that the paper might have been plagiarized it's actually,
there's pretty good ways to detect that. So one thing you can do if you think for
some reason that the paper is plagiarized, you can just put a, a sentence, a full
sentence, from the paper. The, from the material you think is
plagiarized. Put it in quotes and stick it in Google.
And, if. You know, if Google picks up and Google
will often pick up the source that, that came from.
If there's an exact match on a whole sentence.
It's very, a very low probability that the student came up with that on their own.
It's probably plagiarized. So just be, on the watch out for that.
Hopefully we won't have any of that going on in this course.
So you will be graded on three categories. You'll get this zero to three score on
three categories. So the first category is the clarity and
concision of the writing. And this is everything I was talking about
in Unit one. So getting rid of clutter from your
writing. Writing in a clear and clean style.
Being concise. Not using too much jargon and acronyms.
Remember, you're supposed to be writing here for a wide aud-.
Audience of scientists and peers in your class.
If there's major, major problems with. The grammar that make the writing unclear,
That will be picked up in this category as well.
I don't want you to bother to downgrade, your peers if they have small grammatical
errors that don't affect, how clear the writing is.
We're not gonna be picky about, small grammar things.
We're really looking for, overall, is the writing clear and concise.
So that's category one. The second category is what I'm calling
language and style. And this is everything I talked about in
unit two of the course, week two, when I talked about using the active verbs.
Using strong verbs, not turning verb into noun.
And also when I talked about in the first couple of units, first couple of modules
of week three, where I talked about varying your sentence structure and things
like this. So this is about whether or not the
writing is lively and engaging and active and it really draws the readers in.
And whether you have good word choice and good verbs and things like that.
And, so those are all really about, the writing, the sentence level writing.
The third category is a more holistic category which is looking at focus and
organization. So that's asking the question whether or
not each paragraph is, has one main idea whether overall the essay or the paper
works, that is, there's a clear theme to the paper, and that it's well organized,
and that the ideas flow nicely. So, this is more a composition and
paragraph level question. And this is the kind of materials I was
talking, the kinds of things I was talking about in the second half of week three and
the beginning week four so focus on organization.
Each paper should have a clear theme to it.
So, if you're summarizing a hot or classic.
Paper in your field. The theme is going to be somethng like.
Why is this research significant? So that's what the theme of that essay
would be. If you're writing a book review the theme
should be did you like the book and do you recommend it to other readers?
So that should be a clear theme. If you're writing the profile piece, you
actually have two choices on the theme for that one.
You could write either make the theme why the research is significant, or you could.
Rather than focusing totally on the science, you could focus a little bit more
on the person. That's a little bit more challenging to
do, but would be perfectly okay and this can be a really interesting piece, to
focus a little bit more on the, the, the scientists themselves, and why the
research is significant to them, you know? How they are, why, what motivates them,
So something like that. So those would, there should be a clear
theme for, for your paper though. And you will be graded on that.
And, of course you also wanna write in the kinds of style that we've been talking
about so far in this course. Trying to keep your language clear and
concise, and using all those good active verbs and varying your sentence structure.
So that's the grading process. I just want to make a note that I will
need a couple of volunteers. So when you're submitting your paper,
there's a question on there that will ask you if you want to volunteer to have your
paper edited in front of the class. So I'm going to pick a couple of papers
from among those who volunteer. And I'm going to have some modules where I
actually do a demo edit. So I can kinda show you, again, my thought
process in how I would edit something like this.
So if you wanna volunteer, you, you can choose to remain anonymous, I don't have
to, you know, advertise your name to the class if you prefer.
But let me know and I will be picking a couple edits.
It would be a good chance for you to get your edit.
Your work edited by me you have to be willing to, you know have your work edited
in front of the class. And I, I promise to say nice things as
well to, as being critical. So that's the, the paper assignment.
And then the other half of assignment, so the paper is due this Sunday night at
eleven:5555 p.m. A week following that, everybody who
turned in the paper will participate in the peer assessment and edition.
You will at. Edit five people's work.
Your work will be edited by five other people.
So you'll be doing an assessment. You'll be doing a grading for each of
those papers. The grading that I just described in those
three categories. You'll also be asked to provide some
positive comments; some written comments back to the author.
This is very important because, Hopefully everybody who is turning in a paper is
taking this really seriously. It's always very important that you turn
back some positive comments and tell the other what you liked about the paper.
So, there is a box where I want you to put a couple of positive comments to say what
were the strengths of the paper. So take that seriously.
After you do the grading, then you are going to actually edit the paper yourself.
And you're gonna provide to the author two copies of the paper.
You're going to edit the paper. You're gonna provide them a, a version in
which you show, you have a tracked changes kind of version, like you would do tracked
changes in Word. We don't, we're not doing this assignment
in Word, so I'm gonna show you, in a minute, the conventions that I want to you
to use to show the person where you made those adds.
And then also, provide them a clean edited version so that they have a clean copy so
you know, of their revised essay, the edits that you're giving to them.
So provide. Of those, so here are the conventions, the
editing conventions. And this is important cuz I want everybody
to do this the same so there's some uniformity here.
Again, if you use, if you normally use word, word will do track changes for you
but we're not allowed to use any particular program in this class so you're
gonna have to provide. The indications of the edit in the, the
text box. So here are the editing conventions that I
would like you to use. Everywhere that you add new material,
please bold that. So that will indicate to the writer that
this is something that you've added. Everything you delete, you're going to use
a strike through and Bolding and strike-through are available to you in, in
the text box. And then if there some little comments,
don't put too many comments in, but if you have some comments you want to give to the
author like, well, this part didn't make sense to me, I think you need a, need to
have a more focused paragraph. If you want to give some comments about
particular sentences or piece, parts of their paper, put the comments in brackets,
in all caps. And so that will differentiate it, that
this is not something you're writing in the paper, but that it's a comment to the
author. So let me just give you a couple of
examples. So here's something I was editing.
The original says, on January eleven, 2010.
I'm not going to read through the whole thing, but you can kinda see it's about a
particular, case that was a legal case. And, so here's how, what I'm gonna provide
back to the author on that little passage. So, I'm gonna give a version where I show
my edits using the conventions I just described.
And then I'm gonna give a clean edited copy.
And, there's two separate boxes in the assignment, so you can paste both of those
in. So, You can see that everywhere that I
deleted something, I just did a strike through.
Everywhere where I added something, I added it in bold.
And then I wanted to, you know, put little comments to the authors, so, in brackets,
with all caps, I added the comment. Something about, not putting too much
detail in the lead sentence of their paper.
So those are the conventions that we're going to use for the peer editing.
Let me just do one more example. So here's another passage that I was
editing. Again, you can see that I provided a
version in which I show where I've made the changes.
So everywhere I've deleted I do a strike through.
Everywhere I've added I've added in bold. And then I, you know, put a little comment
here, this is a good sentence that sets up the rest of your story.
You can put positive comments as well as criticisms in those brackets in all caps.
Let the reader know that this a comment that your giving to them by putting it in
brackets and all caps. And then again.
Please provide a final edited clean version, so that the writer can see the,
you know, clean version that way you came up with.
And, try to be thorough in your editing, give some really good feedback.
Its again really great practice for you to edit your, to edit other people's work,
you'll learn, it'll kind of reinforce lot of the concepts that we were talking about
in this course. So, good luck with the paper assignment,
have fun with it and have fun and enjoy the peer editing as well.
The preceding program is copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. Please visit us at med.stanford.edu.