Peer Review
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Best Practices for Instructors
As with any other assignment or activity, a peer review exercise should be constructed with learning outcomes in mind. Do you want students to gain skill in editing? Do you primarily want them to improve as writers? Are you using this interactive work to build connection and community within the cohort? All of the above? How much time do you have to devote to it? Would it be more effective to move an in-class session to asynchronous homework? Is the writing assignment iterative? Is there a way to make the peer review iterative as well?
First, some best practices on including peer review in your course assignments from several organizations on teaching and learning:
- Planning and Guiding In-Class Peer Review - Washington U in St Louis Center for Teaching and LearningIncorporating peer review into your course can help your students become better writers, readers, and collaborators. However, peer review must be planned and guided carefully.
- Peer Assessment - McGill Teaching and Learning ServicesThese resources from McGill University's Teaching and Learning Services include a detailed planning and implementation document for instructors, as well as several examples of instructor-created assessment worksheets and instructions to students.
- Teaching Students to Evaluate Each Other - Cornell Center for Teaching InnovationOne-page description of best practices in designing the assignment and supporting students throughout.
- Designing Effective Peer and Self Assessment - UFlorida Center for Instructional Technology and TrainingBest practices, with emphasis on designing a rubric for students to refer to. Resources for creating effective rubrics.
- Instructor Resource Hub - Eli ReviewEli Review is a for-profit teaching and learning suite of tools. Eli was invented by Jeff Grabill, Bill Hart-Davidson, and Mike McLeod, all faculty in the Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures department at Michigan State University and researchers in the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center.
These Instructor Resources include a free four-part series on peer learning pedagogy and collection of teaching materials from classrooms using Eli.
Next, a couple of first-hand accounts of professors changing up how they incorporate the peer review activities and assignments to overcome student disengagement and dissatisfaction with the way it's usually done:
- Peer Review Reviewed by Rachel WagnerIn this Inside Higher Ed article, one instructor describes her goal of trying to get her students to care about writing, by getting them to care about editing. After a failure to engage students in a one-shot, in-class peer review activity, she reimagined it as an integrated part of writing, with the opportunity to work with a different partner on each assignment.
- A Better Way to Do Peer Review of Writing in Large Classes by Lauren McCarthyA UMass professor describes making peer review work for a 100+ student lecture by moving it to the online LMS and reaching out to non-participants.
Student Readings to Encourage Best Practices
Students may be engaging in a peer review activity for the first time in your classroom. As the instructor, try to share one or more example of what is expected, what constitutes good, passable, and poor peer review, and possibly even provide a rubric or worksheet as part of the assignment. The resources below are written for students performing peer review in the classroom, and go into more detail on these best practices and expectations:
Read the entire work before starting your peer review.
Make notes to yourself as you go, but reading the entire work might clarify things that confused you to start - it might be a stylistic choice. Respect stylistic choices, because their paper is not and should not be just like your paper.
Be explicit about the parts you liked or thought worked well, not just things to fix.
Not only does this make the feedback feel less negative, it can help guide changes to problem areas.
When you suggest changes, be specific.
"This is unclear" is not helpful. "The purpose of this sentence/the information it's trying to convey is not clear. Do you mean XYZ or ABC?"
Describe, Evaluate, Suggest
Take a moment to write out your thinking, how the part you're commenting on caught your attention, before making a suggestion. The Eli Review resource below has a good video describing the technique.
Be constructive and professional in your review!
Drafts are going to have mistakes - that's why they're not finished yet. The point of peer review is to improve the work. That only works if your feedback is understandable, helpful, kindly given.
- Giving Feedback for Peer ReviewThe Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers advice on all areas and stages of writing. This page comes from their "Writing with Feedback" section.
- Student Guidelines for Peer Review - Pedagogy in ActionThis page includes a number of tips and suggestions to provide to students before completing their first peer review assignment. A number of these guidelines have been compiled from the University of Richmond's Writing Center and University of Hawaii at Manoa's Writing Program. Instructors may want to discuss these guidelines with students during a peer review practice session.
- Describe-Evaluate-Suggest: A Helpful Feedback Pattern - Eli ReviewLearning to give helpful feedback takes practice. An easy way to start is to follow the describe-evaluate-suggest pattern. Describe-evaluate-suggest doesn’t necessarily describe everything that goes into giving good feedback, but it’s one way for newer reviewers to get started. It also helps to make the feedback writers receive more useful for planning revision. In this video, one of Eli’s co-inventors Bill Hart-Davidson explains how the pattern works.
- Student Resource Hub - Eli ReviewEli Review is a for-profit teaching and learning suite of tools. Eli was invented by Jeff Grabill, Bill Hart-Davidson, and Mike McLeod, all faculty in the Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures department at Michigan State University and researchers in the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center.
These Student Resources include free tutorials and advice on both giving feedback and incorporating feedback into your writing from classrooms using Eli.
And one specific example of an assignment from a classroom here on campus:
- Peer Review Worksheet used in Prof. McCarthy's classesDescribed in her article above, "A Better Way to Do Peer Review of Writing in Large Classes," Prof. McCarthy provides this worksheet to students in her classes performing peer review.
