Peer review activities

Peer review activities are an integral part of academic endeavour. Benefits of students engaging in peer review activities include improved assessment literacy, critical thinking and professional practice to say the least. In its simplest form students will give feedback on ephemeral events such as peer presentation while more complex activities will involve reviewing written or produced peer work against criteria and requiring written feedback.

Individual student perceptions or educational backgrounds may influence their appreciation of peer review. It is important to establish peer review as continuing practice and provide regular opportunities to encourage familiarisation with the process.

Peer review can be placed as an informal activity to accompany other ‘core’ activities such as Presentations and as more structured activities following small group work (for example peer reviewing a one-minute paper).

How to implement

Step 1: Prepare the review criteria

One of the most common student concerns around peer review is the variation in review quality. It is expected that individuals within student cohorts will have varied experience of peer review (if any) and it is therefore the instructor’s responsibility to level the playing field. This may be achieved by providing specific criteria, such as a rubric, for the reviewers to use – the aim is not for opinions to be voiced during peer review but for informed critique to be expressed. Ideally, these criteria will be in the same format/style as the ones used for summative assessment, which will help improve student assessment literacy.

Ensure that you provide the criteria accessibly (for example, in a Word document with headings, or a table with heading rows labelled) so that all students can access them before class.

Step 2: Groups or individuals?

Putting students in groups to review work of other groups is typically the most efficient way of conducting a peer review activity and increases reviewer diversity. Consequently, it is reasonable to plan peer review activities around ‘core’ activities that are small group activities, leveraging the established group composition.

Step 3: Set up a suitable tool

To accommodate all students (campus and remote) an online tool could be used for students to document/submit their peer reviews. Tools such as Padlet, Miro or other collaborative document tools are suitable. For on-campus students who do not have access to a device in the room, or who cannot access tools like Miro, you can ask them to work in pairs.

For a more streamlined experience instructors can set up a peer review assignment using Feedback Fruits which can include an easy-to-use rubric of criteria for review. Set up the peer-review activity in the LMS and share the instructions with the students before the session.

Suggested peer review activities

• Peer review of student presentations
• Peer review of group activities

How to provide feedback

Depending on how the peer review is implemented, instructors can provide overall comments either in writing or in person. It is possible to provide comments after the teaching session as well when there will be more time for detailed feedback.

LMS tools

These LMS tools enable peer review activities or are online alternatives:

• Peer Review in FeedbackFruits
• Group Member Evaluation in FeedbackFruits
• Padlet
• LMS Discussions
• Ed Discussion.

Important: Not all tools are accessible to all students. Actively encourage students to seek out the teaching staff if any tool is inaccessible to them.

Staff resources

• Involving students in peer review.

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