2024 Convention Paper Review - Instructions
As you read your assigned submissions, it may be helpful to read several works to get a feel for the process and for the quality of the work overall. Also, it may be easier to identify the truly strong or very weak works first to establish the range before assigning ratings for the works falling somewhere in the middle.
Logging On to the Review Site
To begin, go logon to the review site.
You will be prompted to login in/choose a password. If you can't remember your password, you can choose a new password here:
Once you log in, click on the "Start Reviewing" button to see all of the submissions that have been allocated to you.
You will be able to review each submission and score it accordingly using the provided marking scheme. When finished, mark each submission as Complete so we can move forward with it. Once you mark a submission as Complete, you will not be able to make any further edits.
You can find a detailed guide on this process following the link below:
https://support.exordo.com/article/450-reviewing-my-assigned-submissions
The deadline for review of papers is the November 20, 2023. We would be extremely grateful if you could complete your reviews before this deadline so that we can review and select paper acceptances without delay.
After you have logged on to the site, you will see the list of submissions assigned to you.
This is an anonymous review process; students were instructed not to include their names within the submissions.
I would appreciate any suggestions you have for grouping the papers you evaluate into pairs of two or more, or even suggesting complete sessions and session titles for four (or more, in the case of poetry collections) related papers. You may send any such recommendations to me at englishconvention@niu.edu.
If you run into problems, such as an inability to open a document, contact the Central Office at englishconvention@niu.edu. Please include the five digit submission sequence number in your message.
Again, your evaluation of the papers should be completed by November 20, 2023.
Evaluation Criteria
As you evaluate, you will be prompted to use the following criteria. While each criterion will appear in the evaluation site, you will not see these descriptions, so please read these carefully and have these descriptions handy as you are reading submissions. Please make certain you are following the criteria as described on either Critical Paper or Original Creative Works.
The criteria are weighted, though no numbers appear during your evaluation process. The weights will determine the overall score listed for each submission. You will not see an overall score for the submissions you evaluate. Note that although a poetry submission may consist of several poems, you will use the Original Creative Work criteria to provide one evaluation for the collection as a whole.
As you read your assigned submissions, it may be helpful to read several works to get a feel for the process and for the quality of the work overall. Also, it may be easier to identify the truly strong or very weak works first to establish the range before assigning ratings for the works falling somewhere in the middle.
Critical Essay - Evaluation Criteria
Content: To what extent is the claim a strong one? How clear is the argument or premise? Does the work have a clear focus? Is it thoughtful?
Structure: Is the work well organized? Is each main point clear and well-placed? Does the work have a clear organizational plan? Is the organizational plan appropriate for the topic? Is the reasoning that supports the argument sound?
Original/Will Engage Audience: For student work, is this an imaginative or fresh approach to the topic or argument? To what extent is this approach creative? Would this work spark discussion?
Support/Research: Is the work detailed enough and fully explained? Does the student include research and documentation as appropriate to the topic? Is borrowed material (both paraphrases and quotations) clearly identified as borrowed and correctly documented? How strong is the support, including explanations and borrowed material?
Carefully Planned: Are the sentences well-crafted? Does the student use appropriate diction? Is the piece well-written and free of unintentional grammatical mistakes, typos, or other errors?
Original Creative Work - Evaluation Criteria
Content: Does the work have a clear focus or convey a central image? Does the work have depth of emotional or tonal complexity? How clear are any themes? Is it thoughtful?
Structure: Is the work well organized for its genre? Does the work have a clear organizational plan? Is the organizational plan appropriate for the topic and approach?
Original/Will Engate Audience: For student work, is this an imaginative or fresh approach to the topic or theme or genre? To what extent is this approach creative? Would this work spark discussion or reflection?
Support/Research: Is the work detailed enough and how convincing are the details? How vivid or rich are the images? Do the details and explanations recreate the experience for the reader?
Carefully Planned: Are the sentences and phrases well-crafted? Does the student use appropriate diction for the subject matter and approach? Is the piece well-written and free of unintentional grammatical mistakes, typos, or other errors?
Scoring
When you scroll down to the Evaluation section for each submission, you will have the opportunity to rate the work for each of the five criteria. The ratings—Excellent, Very Good, Average, Weak, Unsatisfactory—should be based on your evaluation of the work. Thus, if I were considering the content for a particular work and wanted to rate it "Very Good," my screen would look like the following example:
Remarks
The final item under Evaluation is "Remarks." Students will not see this information. You can use this space for any of the following:
- to give reasons for "Unsatisfactory" ratings
- to recommend disqualifying the submission because it is too short (under 8 minutes reading time) or too long (over 15 minutes reading time/over 2,100 words)
- to note works that were submitted with identifying elements such as submitter name or institution
- to recommend disqualifying the submission because the work promotes hate speech
- to recommend that a submission be reevaluated because, for example, the work had a technical glitch that caused a portion of the text to go missing but clearly exhibits its worthiness for presentation
- to note that the body of the work is over the word limit by a few words, not counting the Works Cited or parenthetical citations.
- to strongly encourage a poet not to include a particularly weak poem in an otherwise acceptable collection. We will gently communicate this information with the poet as long as the collection will still take at least 8 minutes to present.
- Note, however, that we cannot allow students to add to a poetry collection that contains only one or two short poems; we simply do not have time to re-evaluate a submission revised to reflect the guidelines.
You will notice each submission is marked with the status "Submitted" or "Evaluated." Submissions will change from "Submitted" to "Evaluated" only after the last evaluator assigned to the submission has scored.
Additional Resources
Submission Guidelines provided to Student Submitters
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