Peer review
Peer review provides opportunities for students to:
- gain a better understanding of their learning
- develop evaluation and assessment skills
- become better readers, writers and collaborators.
Peer review involves students reflecting on the work of their peers (according to set criteria related to learning outcomes) and providing constructive feedback using appropriate peer-review feedback strategies. Students are then encouraged to reflect and respond to feedback provided and adjust their work accordingly. Peer review provides students with a safe environment where errors in their work are valued as opportunities for learning and development.
| Peer review is | effective for: | best to pair with: |
|---|---|---|
 |
|
|
How to facilitate peer review
- If peer-review is new to your students, it’s important to lay down some ground work before you get them to engage in the activity.
- Give students an example of the artefact (report, essay, presentation, etc) you want them to create and get them to provide feedback on it.
- Coach them on how to make their comments specific and constructive (see feedback strategies for more detail).
- Coach them on how they should respond to the feedback and comments received on the example artefact and how they could use this feedback to improve the artefact.
- Provide your students with a rubric or checklist that clearly outlines the success criteria they should be looking for when reviewing their peers' work. This can include levels of performance to guide and focus the students' feedback. It must be clear to your students how the peer review activity and its accompanying criteria link to your unit's learning outcomes.
- Consider how you will assign your peer review groups. Do you want them to work together the entire class or semester? Do you want them to change for every assignment? How often do you want them to provide peer review for each assignment? Do you want the peer review to remain anonymous?
- If the peer reviews are being facilitated synchronously during class, be sure to provide clear directions and time limits for the sessions. If the peer reviews are being conducted asynchronously, be sure to set clear deadlines for when the peer review must be completed.
- Listen to the in-class discussions and provide guidance and input as necessary. If the sessions are asynchronous, make sure you are monitoring the comments.
- Consider getting your students to reflect on the feedback/comments they received on their work and get them to discuss/write a plan indicating what changes they will make to their work. Ask them to explain what feedback they chose to take on board and what feedback they chose to ignore and why?
- Ask students to assess the quality of the feedback they received based on the feedback strategy implemented.
- Discuss the process in class and address any issues that occurred. Ask your students what they learned from the process.
Before the session
- If peer-review is new to your students, it’s important to lay down some ground work before you get them to engage in the activity.
- Give students an example of the artefact (report, essay, presentation, etc) you want them to create and get them to provide feedback on it.
- Coach them on how to make their comments specific and constructive (see feedback strategies for more detail).
- Coach them on how they should respond to the feedback and comments received on the example artefact and how they could use this feedback to improve the artefact.
- Provide your students with a rubric or checklist that clearly outlines the success criteria they should be looking for when reviewing their peers' work. This can include levels of performance to guide and focus the students' feedback. It must be clear to your students how the peer review activity and its accompanying criteria link to your unit's learning outcomes.
- Consider how you will assign your peer review groups. Do you want them to work together the entire class or semester? Do you want them to change for every assignment? How often do you want them to provide peer review for each assignment? Do you want the peer review to remain anonymous?
During the session
- If the peer reviews are being facilitated synchronously during class, be sure to provide clear directions and time limits for the sessions. If the peer reviews are being conducted asynchronously, be sure to set clear deadlines for when the peer review must be completed.
- Listen to the in-class discussions and provide guidance and input as necessary. If the sessions are asynchronous, make sure you are monitoring the comments.
After the session
- Consider getting your students to reflect on the feedback/comments they received on their work and get them to discuss/write a plan indicating what changes they will make to their work. Ask them to explain what feedback they chose to take on board and what feedback they chose to ignore and why?
- Ask students to assess the quality of the feedback they received based on the feedback strategy implemented.
- Discuss the process in class and address any issues that occurred. Ask your students what they learned from the process.
Feedback strategies
There are a number of feedback strategies you can get your learners to implement when undertaking the peer review activity to ensure the feedback is constructive and appropriate. Expand the accordion below to learn more about some of the more common strategies.
Example 1
Get students to submit their work to you. After collection, randomly redistribute the works back to your students along with an accompanying rubric. Get your students to evaluate the work assigned to them according to the feedback strategy you have chosen. Once they have completed this task, get them to swap their assigned piece of work with another peer. Your students then repeat the process with the second work and then both students discuss and compare their feedback on both works with the class.
Example 2
When students are working on group projects, get the group members to evaluate each group member's contribution to the project according to a specific checklist or rubric using your chosen feedback strategy.