Wrotevote is effective because:
- It encourages members to read and respond to each other's writing.
- It captures some of the benefits of competition while minimising the harms.
- It emphasises positive reinforcement while minimising the kind of feedback that would be demotivating (such as seeing yourself on the bottom of a leaderboard).
- It reinforces the social aspect of writing.
Its biggest weakness is that it is not systematic.
The element of randomness and surprise also means that all results need to be taken with a grain of salt, because you can never be sure who saw what snippet, in what combination.
So when you use Wrotevote, encourage students to:
- enjoy the highs
- put disappointments down to randomness
- learn from the winners, and
- maintain a healthy desire to improve personal performance.
Also, Wrotevote is most effective when checkpoint pieces are short.
Some lessons have long checkpoint pieces, which can make Wrotevote fatiguing because of the amount of reading required.
If you notice that the checkpoints are more than a couple of paragraphs, consider switching to Peer Review instead of Wrotevote.
