Stop, Collaborate and Listen... to Your Peers

Chapter 6 of Envision, titled “Organizing and Writing Research Arguments,” talks about various aspects of writing a research argument including organization, how to integrate sources, and how to write a draft. The authors explain how to use visual organizational methods such as a bubble web and a graphic flow chart and other non-visual methods such as an outline to help organize a research argument. The authors then go on to explain how to integrate sources into a research argument appropriately, rhetorically, and strategically. Integrating can be done by summarizing, paraphrasing, or by using direct quotations. Later in the chapter the authors explain how to write a draft and brought up a topic that I found particularly interesting because it not only applied to writing, but also to my major, architecture.

The authors discussed the idea of collaborating with others through peer review. Collaboration and peer review allows for a write to hear advice from other about their work on how to improve it. I recently traveled to Chicago on the CAP first year trip and had a chance to visit many wonderful places in the city. While the majority of the places that we visited were nice, others were not. The Harold Washington Library was one of “bad” places. The designers and the committee that approved the design did not take into account the people who would be using the space. The library is confusing and uncomfortable to navigate. When we visited the public atrium located on the top floor, we had to travel through a maze of escalators and elevators to arrive there. The public space is hardly used by anyone because it is so difficult to arrive there. The rest of the library is also laid out uncomfortably.

The people of Chicago have an idea of what a Chicago building looks like and when the Harold Washington Library was built, many people did not like it. With its Beaux-Art style façade, the building looks like it belongs in Paris, not Chicago. When the design was chosen, the committee chose it because they thought it looked like a library. The fist design eliminated was the people’s choice, quickly followed by the librarian’s choice. Had the committee and the designers stopped and worked with and listened to the people who would be using the library, they could have chosen a better design that would have made the building work better with its surroundings and with its users. Peer review is a tool that is more than something that we have to do when just when drafts are due. It can have a large impact in the real world which is why it is such an important tool to know and understand.

(Photo by me)