Peer Review: Formal Report Draft

To: Emilyn Sim, ENGL 301 Student, <esim01@student.ubc.ca>

From: Sangita Dutta, ENGL 301 Student, <sdutta06@student.ubc.ca>

Subject: Peer Review of Formal Proposal Draft

Date: April 2nd, 2023

Thank you for your formal report on “Inclusivity in Hackathons: An Assessment of Mentorship Strategies”  As a computer science student who attended hackathons, your research and report provides valuable insights into how hackathons can be made more inclusive and welcoming for participants from diverse backgrounds. Please see below for some feedback and suggestions:

First Impressions:

The report is very well structured and organized with clear headings, subheadings, double-space, and easy to read font. It also maintains an objective, professional, and positive tone that reflects the you-attitude towards the readers addressed. There was also no major grammatical errors found. You clearly identified a problem prevalent in current hackathon structures, and I was impressed by your thorough investigate to determine the current practices and styles of 6 prominent hackathons across Canada as there was great level of details in your data section.

Title Page

• Includes informative title that clearly conveys the purpose of the report
• Appropriately ordered (Title, Recipient, Author)
• Could include submission date after author

Table of Contents

• Well formatted table of contents, heading and subheading are clearly organized using numbers, roman numerals and letters

Introduction

• The introduction was very well organized with clear headings and subheadings that report content clearly.
• The definition and background information of hackathon section provides a great understanding to readers who may not be well-versed with what a hackathon is.
• The barriers to hackathons section clearly identified areas of improvements to a hackathon
• One suggestion is to include the phrase “purpose of report” in the 4th subheading “Recommendations to Improve Hackathon Participate”, it can help readers easily understand that the purpose of the report is to provide a recommendation for this inefficiency found in existing hackathons.
• Research and Sources section provided great level of details on the methods of the report. Again, it may help make the document even easier to understand by including the phrase “methods” as part of this subheading. Identifying the primary and secondary sources used may also be helpful in aiding the readers understand the different type of sources used for the report.
• Scope section included the board areas of investigation (current state of hackathon, ways to increase participation and engagement). It may be helpful to breakdown the scope of inquiry to match the information provided in the data section to readers better understand the specific questions being researched. For example, “what is the current hackathon structure?”, “is there a lack of diversity in current hackathon structure?”, “is there a lack of individualized mentorship in current hackathon?”

Data Section 

• Data Section also extremely well organized with headings and subheadings that helps create a nice flow and avoid big chunks of text, making it easy to read and understand.
• Good use of direct preview statements and transitional words in each section, making it clear what information is coming next.
• The figures stand out and are visually appealing. Consider labelling the figures and provide the figure before discussing it, as it helps readers know which data/graph is currently being discussed and make the report more technical. Another suggestion is to keep the format consistent, as sometimes figures come after a sentence, and sometimes it comes after a section. Keeping it all in one format (e.g. all figures come before discussion, and then figures are referred to by its figure label in the discussion), can make the section even more organized.
• Interpretation of results were very well-done and helps reader understand the significance of findings.
• A major strength of this section is that the primary research results are backed up using secondary sources, which provides credibility and makes it more compelling for readers to act upon the recommendations suggested.
• Overall, I found the data section to be the most informative as it is very detailed and data/findings are supported with both primary and secondary sources.

Conclusion

• The “Summary and Overall Interpretation of Findings” section clearly re-states the barriers that are found in the data section. Consider including a brief summary of results and interpretation of results stated in the data section to refresh readers on the information that was discussed earlier.
• The “Recommendations for Improving Inclusivity at Hackathons” Section makes realistic recommendations and directly relates it back to the purpose of the report. One suggestion is to provide more details on how the recommendations can be successfully implemented. For example, what are the resources required? where should it be hosted? what is the target demographic for the hackathon? By including more details, it may help the target readers understand the feasibility of implementing the recommendations provided.

Works Cited

• Good implementation of MLA citations throughout the document.
• Reference list is correctly formatted.

Appendices

• Clearly organized

 

Final Comments

Overall, this report was impressive and makes a compelling case on the barriers that exists in the current hackathon structures and steps to mitigate this issue. To further strengthen your work, please consider the following suggestions:

• Including any potential drawbacks that may happen if the recommendations were to be implemented.
• Providing more transparency on how the primary research was conducted by including the total number of students that were surveyed and more background information on the participants (e.g. whether they were all computer science students at UBC , approximate age group etc.)
• Including “purpose” and “method” in the subheadings in introduction to help readers clearly identify each component.
• Providing figure labels to clearly indicate the figure being the discussed.
• Following one consistent format for including the figures in your document (e.g. figures before the discussions).
• Briefly re-state the research findings and interpretation of results in the summary section.
• Providing more details on how the recommendations can be successfully implemented.

I hope these revisions will help you in your revision process. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me at sdutta06@student.ubc.ca