Quality Matters Reviewer Status

This last week I completed the Quality Matters Peer Reviewer Course, and successfully applied to become a Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. It has taken quite a bit of my time these last two weeks, and I'm a bit behind on LAK13, and need to catch up.

I enjoyed the Peer Reviewer Course, and gained a broader understanding of what QM reviews should focus on. The primary area I had difficulty with was providing balanced feedback without sounding repetitive or insincere. I consistently provided constructive feedback that used evidence from the course and the QM Rubric, but was a bit terse and may have turned off the course instructor. I'm generally good at providing positive feedback to students and faculty, but didn't include many positive statements or comment. I suppose I was focusing on the rubric and the course, and not the fact that there was a person behind the course.

I do wish the course relied on individual files less. Almost every link in the course was a separate Word or pdf file. By the end of the course I had two dozen files to wade through. Granted, I have these files for future reference, but having the option to download them, or view them as web pages would be preferable.

As a personal preference, the course used an anthropology course as a sample course to review, and I wish they had chosen a different discipline. Out of all social sciences, I've always had the most difficulty understanding anthropology. A friend of mine just earned their masters in anthropology, and called anthropology the study of human behavior that doesn't fit into any other social science. This is obviously useful, but a discipline that has no clear definition or guiding topic area rubs against my training in axiomatic thinking.