As with writing, generating a high-quality popular source takes time, practice, and perspective. This assignment will generate a lot of feedback for each person, quickly, and provide you with the opportunity to see a wide variety of projects (and approaches).

Objectives

  • Learn to provide constructive criticism on popular sources communicating scientific information.
  • Receive suggestions to improve your own popular source, both in form and content.

Time Estimate

1 hour (but it’s worth 2 points to incentivise helping out your peers)

Assignment Instructions

Once popular source drafts are submitted, a survey link will be provided that will show you a random selection of 12 popular source drafts.

For each project, you will be asked three required questions (what you like most, biggest suggestion for improvement, and a follow-up question) and one optional question (any additional comments).

I do not have a clever way to prevent you from seeing your own popular source as one of the 12 randoms - if you do get your own, you can just write “this is mine” or similar in the required text boxes.

For credit on this activity, you need to provide feedback on all 12 selected projects to complete & submit the survey (keep going until you get the end/confirmation/thank you screen). If you need a break, you can try leaving it open in a window and come back later BUT if the page refreshes you may lose your progress and need to start over (there is no way to reliably save and retrieve partial work).

Evaluation

2 points possible, all-or-nothing (Be sure to complete all 12 reviews and hit ‘Submit’ at the end so you see the end screen! You’ll know it when you see it.)

Next: Final Popular Source

Previous: Peer Review Papers

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