Peer Review

By Ian Gold, McGill University

At a Glance

Discipline

Interdisciplinary
Humanities

Instructional Level

University

Course

PHIL201; 221

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Individual

Type of Tasks

Reviewing & assessing peers
Revising & improving
Writing

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

Peerceptiv

Class size

Large (100-250)

Time

Semester long

Instructional Purpose

Application & knowledge building
Assessment & knowledge refinement

Overview

Students get experience with a better model of writing in this activity, which employs Peer Assessment as the Active Learning strategy. The activity takes place over the course of the semester, beginning after week 2-3.The value of this for the students is in giving them experience with understanding the nature of revision in the writing process and making good use of critique and feedback.

After introducing students to Peerceptiv, students are asked to write a paper and publish it on Peerceptiv. Every student’s paper is then sent to 4 student reviewers who comment and rate the paper according to questions set by the instructor. Students revise their paper and rate their commenters. After the second submission, a new set of 4 student reviewers read and evaluate the paper. Peerceptive assigns a grade to each paper based on the student evaluation process.

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

Revise a piece of writing taking into account peer feedback
Evaluate a peer’s writing work using a peer feedback form

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

This contributes to a skills-based education
In larger courses without TAs, students will be able to benefit from feedback and learn to incorporate revising and receiving feedback into their writing process.
Being in a position of an evaluator helps students improve their own writing, as they are guided by the comment prompts given by the professor for evaluating their peers.

Challenges

Submissions in French make the process more difficult as not all students are able to read and comment in French
It is a challenge if people submit late as they get left out of the round of feedback
The web-based nature of the activity takes some adjustment to learn for the students

Tips

In order to accomodate French submissions, manually set up a separate group to evaluate each other
It is useful to show students that grades are often higher in this process as it helps motivate students. In order to accommodate people who resist the process, give them an option for a final grade with the instructor.
Talking to an instructor who has done the process can be beneficial when first implementing the activity for the first time.
Start the activity very early in the term (first 2-3 weeks), and organize course topics to allow students to find paper topics early enough.

Applied Strategies

Peer Assessment

Critical thinking and communication

Peer Review

Self-assessment and constructive feedback skills

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Published: 25/09/2021

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