In-class Virtual Peer Review (bien), Out of class Virtual Peer Review (es muy mal)

I mentioned in my last post some of my previous experiences with virtual peer review and that I was perplexed as to why I had not incorporated more opportunity for such activities in my class (or outside my class). I think part of my reluctance is simply because of all those pesky technology issues that can arise. I can think of one example from this semester where an ESL student had the Chinese version of MS Word, and when she tried to open her document in class to print it off there was nothing but corrupt file error messages and strange, cryptic computer symbols where her paper should have been. (One brief aside, teaching in a desktop computer classroom usually facilitates students bringing in electronic copies of their papers anyway because they can print them off and not have to waste their own ink – the only annoying part is when they ask for a stapler). Conducting virtual peer review outside of class also makes me a little wary because I feel I would inevitably I get a slue of e-mails from students saying that they couldn’t open their partners papers, they don’t have Word (but WordPerfect), they didn’t know how to save the paper as a .rtf (even though we went over it in class, like four times), yadda-yadda-yadda. I guess, if I required virtual peer reviews that were performed in-class, I would feel like I had better control, could still answer the immediate concerns of students (rather than whenever I checked my inbox), and could mediate technical difficulties that might arise (as best as I could anyway).