61 Peer-to-Peer with Tim Paustian — 02.27.2017

The February 13, 2017 Active Teaching Lab explored strategies for using Canvas’ peer review tool. Tim Paustian from Bacteriology shared how he uses the tool in Canvas to encourage peer-to-peer feedback and improve students’ writing.

Takeaways

• The peer review function makes peer-to-peer feedback an efficient and seamless activity.
• Tim has shifted from one major writing assignment to many minor peer-reviewed ones that lead up a final one. The students appreciate the scaffolding and feedback, and he has noticed a significant increase in the quality of writing as the semester progresses.
• Initial reviews without a rubric resulted in superficial comments (looks good, missing comma, etc.), but the rubric helps them make better comments about the structure.
• Tim now has student reviewers use the same rubric to provide feedback that he uses.
• Tim currently has not found a good way to keeps track of student reviewer comments within Canvas, so he keeps track with a spreadsheet outside of Canvas.
• View the session’s activity sheet for additional support materials.
• For a detailed tutorial on using the Canvas Peer Review tool, click here.

Active Teaching Labs are held every Friday from 8:45-9:45am (and every other Monday from 12:30pm-1:30pm, see events calendar for dates) in room 120, Middleton Building. Check out the upcoming labs or read the recaps from past labs — or see them all in one place in our new Active Teaching Lab eJournal (bit.ly/ATL-ejournal). To stay informed about upcoming Labs, check back to this website or sign up for regular announcements by sending an email to join-activeteaching@lists.wisc.edu.

UW-Madison is transitioning to Canvas as a single, centrally supported LMS, and will discontinue support for D2L and Moodle by 2018. Visit canvasinfo.wisc.edu for information and resources.

Watch Tim’s story:

Want to learn more? Watch the discussion that follows: