Conducting Successful Peer Review

Introduction

Peer review is an activity where peers give feedback on a project in process. When instructors include peer review in the classroom, we are modeling the academic process we see when publishing papers for an academic journal, both helping our students enter into the disciplinary community and showing them their opinions matter.

Including peer review in your class can benefit students in that they get feedback throughout their writing process and learn the importance of starting writing projects early and continuing to revise (Baker, 2016). Students can receive more opinions on their writing in addition to the instructor, helping to lessen the time an instructor might read multiple drafts of a paper (Ekşi, 2012). Students also greatly benefit from seeing what their peers are working on as additional examples of what techniques they might want to emulate in their own writing (Lundstrom & Baker, 2009). In addition, peer review can be an important means to build a sense of belonging in your course. Students have reported feeling a greater sense of connectedness and enhanced sense of meaning when writing projects involve peer review (Eudice, Geller, & Lerner, 2017).

Best Practice

The best peer review does require the instructor to give some direction to students so they know what to comment on and in what depth. Read White’s “Preparing Students in Advance for Peer Review” for ideas on how to prepare students for peer review activities. Peer review is also a vulnerable space for students, and so Kelenyi’s “Inclusive Peer Review” has some advice on how to make peer review activities a more inclusive, anti-racist practice. The end of this chapter includes several examples of peer review in different disciplines across campus.

Peer review can also be done in a wide variety of ways to help you find an effective way to incorporate it into any classroom context:

• The traditional model is to set aside class time and have students work in pairs or groups to trade full drafts of papers and provide feedback a few days before the paper is due.
• Students can also be required to read a peer’s drafts and write comments outside of class and then discuss their feedback in class to take up less class time.
• Peer review can also occur at any point in the writing process, including reviewing research questions, annotated bibliographies or research notes, outlines or proposals, or even reviewing presentations rather than writing. See Bouza’s Doing Peer Review through In-Class Presentations and Crooks’ “Activities for Focused Peer Review”
• Peer review can also occur out of class through meet-ups or Zoom, with similar practices as in-class peer review.
• Students can also provide feedback to shorter pieces or research questions on discussion boards.
• Students can also be instructed to conduct peer review asynchronously by leaving comments on shared google docs within a specified time window or sending feedback in another remote form. See Sharma’s “Zoology 957 Writing Assignments and Peer Review,” Asderau’s “Peer Review Feedback Form,”

Sources

Baker, K. M. (2016). Peer review as a strategy for improving students’ writing process. Active Learning in Higher Education, 17(3), 179–192.

Ekşi, G. Y. (2012). Peer review versus teacher feedback in process writing: How effective. International Journal of Applied Educational Studies, 13(1), 33-48.

Lundstrom, K., & Baker, W. (2009). To give is better than to receive: The benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s own writing. Journal of second language writing, 18(1), 30-43.