Good writing comes from effectively revising your work to meet the expectations of the assignment and the audience. Learning to receive feedback—emotionally wok through it and then wrestle through whether and how to take the suggestions—is key to becoming a better writer.
If you’re looking for the specifics of how to use revision features, the Eli student user guide for full details. Watch the video below for a how-to, and keep reading for some best practice recommendations.
Revision Plan Best Practices
The Revision Plan is a crucial feature in Eli. Having a plan for what criteria to focus on will help you save time and energy when you actually start to change your draft.
Your instructor may ask you to create a revision plan as part of a revision task, or you can still make one even if it’s not required.
Deciding what to use – applying a rating forces you to think about how useful that comment will be.
Feedback for reviewers – let your reviewers know whether or not they’ve given you helpful feedback.
Feedback for instructors – let your instructor know whether you’ve gotten helpful feedback
Add feedback to a revision plan – when you find a really helpful comment, add it to your revision plan.
Some things you can keep in mind about what makes a good revision plan:
Leave notes for yourself – whenever you add a comment to your revision plan, you have the option of leaving a note for yourself. Consider using this space to write some specific ideas about how you might act on that piece of feedback: what will you write? where will you do research? who do you need to talk to?
Prioritize your revision plan items: You can sort the actionable items in your list to reflect your priorities by dragging and dropping to rearrange them.
Focus first on revisions that will have the most significant impact on the overall draft. What are the things that will help you improve most? Give those things high priority.
Give minor changes and those that will take less time lower priority on the list.
You can think more broadly about all the feedback you’ve received – the “Additional Revision Notes” section near the bottom of the revision plan will allow you to write anything else you might need to keep in mind as you revise. Think about insights you gained from:
reading peers’ drafts
giving feedback to peers
hearing models discussed in class
hearing the most helpful comments discussed in class
hearing the instructor identify revision goals from the trait id checklists and ratings
participating in other class activities
Make sure your note answers any questions your instructor posed in the revision plan prompt. Some instructors reply to your revision plans, so make sure you know when to check back for your instructor’s feedback.
You can get specific instructions on how to build a revision plan in the Eli student user guide.
