Understanding the review column

The review column causes a lot of confusion for a lot of people. A lot of students do weird things and end up getting bad reviews.

When to put cards into the review column

Repo projects

People mess this one up all the time. Focus

Only put your card into the Review column when your master branch is complete. Basically your master branch needs to hit all the requirements set out in the project brief. If you still have PRs that need to be merged then get those merged before moving forward.

The master branch needs to be complete and demonstrate that you are at least competent.

This one is simpler. You need to hit these requirements before requesting review:

  1. Link your card to whatever you were supposed to. Eg if you were meant to create a Google Doc then your card should link to the doc
  2. Anyone with the link should be able to access your project. Ie: your work should not be private
  3. The project should be complete and demonstrate competence.

Topics

You can move topics once you have:

  1. Understood the material
  2. Followed whatever instructions were in the topic

What happens to cards in the review column?

As you progress in your course you’ll start seeing other cards showing up in your review column, cards that look a little weird and link to other people’s work. When that happens then you need to look at the person’s work and add a review.

That’s right! You’ll be reviewing your peers! And they will be reviewing you :)

What you need to do when you review someone else’s work is:

  1. Make sure you understand the instructions that they were meant to follow
  2. Read their work. If they wrote code, make sure it runs and does what it was supposed to.
  3. Click the “Add Review” button and fill in the form.

The review form explains itself. There is some helptext that should make sense.

One cool thing worth noting is that the review comments accept markdown text so you can add formatting and bullet points and that sort of thing.

Review statuses and card movements

There are basically 2 positive statuses (Competent and Excellent) and 2 negative statuses (Not Yet Competent nad Red Flag).

  1. If anyone adds any negative status to a card then the card moves to the “Review Feedback” column. Then the person who did the work can make changes and fixes and request another review.
  2. If a student adds a positive review to a card then the card does not move. It just gets a smiley face
  3. If a staff member or trusted reviewer adds a positive review to a card then it moves to the complete column.

What to review first

The best thing is to aim to review people who haven’t had feedback yet. Look for cards where there are the fewest smiley faces and review those first.

You should also try to review the simplest things first as much as possible.

THIS IS A TEST!!!

By taking part in this review process you get to:

  • practice good professional communication skills
  • practice team work
  • show us that you know what competent work looks like

You need to aim to be fast and accurate with your reviews.

In terms of accuracy, if you mark something as Competent and then a staff member marks it as Not Yet Competent then that tells us that you don’t know what competence looks like. Which means you have gaps in your knowledge.

We dont expect you to be perfect all the time. But we do expect you to keep an eye on cards you’ve reviewed. If a staff member disagrees with your review you need to look at it and figure out why they disagree with you. Then the next time you review someone’s work you need to try to use your new knowledge.

By reviewing code and stating your opinion you will constantly test and upgrade your skills.


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