On 27 October, a conference on online writing and peer review was successfully convened in Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, China. The conference was organized by Shanghai Foreign Language Audio-Visual Publishing House, together with the Training Center of Ministry of Education for Studying Overseas, Northeast Normal University.
More than 100 scholars and student researchers from over 40 universities attended the conference. Among them, six leading experts made keynote speeches on what technology can do for writing teaching and learning. Professor Jiasheng Hu gave an opening speech on the value of peer review and Peerceptiv technology. Professor Ying Gao and Fuhui Zhang presented the latest findings on peer review and aroused great interest in Peerceptiv in the audience.
The Q & A sessions were interactive and helpful. The teachers raised a question about languages which could be operated in giving peer feedbacks. They suggested that the comments from peers should allow multiple languages such as Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Japanese, for students should be allowed to use the language they feel most comfortable or competent in giving comments. If the Peerceptiv could support multiple languages, it would attract more teachers in China to use the Peerceptiv, especially those who teach other languages other than English.
In addition, other teachers who want to use Peerceptiv in their teaching suggest a function of highlighting language problems (e.g, using underline or bold) occurred in student writings should be wisely needed. On the one hand, it is not necessary to correct all language problems in the end comments, for some problems they just need to be pointed out in their writings. On the other hand, without such an underline, it will be time-consuming for students to track back their language problems in their writings according to peer feedbacks given in the end comments box.