Feedback from client Jenny Grahame

A very promising start – but across the board, some problems in the balance of information and opinion. You really need to start from thinking about the essential information your readers are going to need for the purposes of the exam (Matt and Tara start off very well in this respect) , and resource them factually and theoretically before you launch off into your own views.

To take just two examples, I think Natalie’s piece, which is very factual but well informed, gets this nearly right, although it could do with some references to theory; whereas Philippa’s article on Facebook is very lively and personal but needs much more factual research and detailed examples of Facebook use to support the arguments, and in particular to justify some of her remarks about Facebook ‘addiction’ - which does play a bit worryingly to the ‘moral panics’ often expressed about social networking. Similarly, James’ piece on Wikipedia needs a lot more data and theoretical references to support his personal views – and he needs to unpick his section about ‘How ‘true’ is Wikipedia’, in which he makes some fairly general assumptions. Across the range of the pieces, I think you’re covering interesting stuff and have got lots of good ideas, but often there’s too much padding and not enough planning to incorporate more critical and theoretical issues.

Have to rush, but will feed back more at the next draft. Do think about planning, though – sometimes its really helpful to incorporate web references and exampoles into your initial planning from the very start. The use of real-life examples, with weblinks and acknowledged quotes, is what will make these pieces really useful to readers.

Overall, I think Jenny's criticism is very fair and accurate, and it backs up what I have personally said from the start about clear statistics and quotes in which students can use in the exam would be good in the articles. I also said a personal opinion isn't vital as this will not help students in the exam, Jenny has also picked up on this too, so overall I agree with her feedback.

I am glad Jenny have recognised that Matt and I have tried to do this is our first draft of our article and I think we are overall doing well, it simply needs expanding and adding more statistics. It will be interesting to see what Jenny says about mine and Matt's next draft of the article.