I recently attended a great talk on the critical process of sharing feedback with students. Timely, specific feedback from instructors on draft assignments, or on work that bears similarities to future work, or sets a foundation for next steps, is one of the most important aspects in supporting student learning. Feedback is a universal necessity for all efforts to improve. It benefits learning, growth in our careers, and in our relationships. There are several excellent approaches and models in the literature. One potentially effective and inclusive opportunity for students to give and receive valuable feedback is ‘peer review’. I use the term ‘potentially effective’ because, when not well structured, the practice can be fraught for both instructors and students.
Peer Review as an Inclusive Practice
Well-structured peer review fosters inclusivity in higher education by encouraging the sharing of diverse perspectives and enabling students to learn from each other’s strengths and experiences (Nicol et al., 2014). This practice promotes critical thinking, self-regulation, and a deeper understanding of subject matter (Topping, 2009). Additionally, structured peer review has been shown to improve ‘feedback literacy’ which can empower students from all backgrounds to engage in equitable learning opportunities (Carless & Boud, 2018). Peer review benefits both the receiver and the reviewer. When inserted into a course, and with some effort at the outset to set it up, peer review can also reduce some time pressure on instructors. This post is focused on the learning benefits of this student-centered, inclusive practice.
Peer Review is Formative Feedback
Formative assessments and the accompanying feedback allow for improvement “along the way” to some version of summative assessment. Formative assessments are often in the form of drafts or quizzes that allow self- assessment and reflection (often in discussion between peers) and are intentionally ‘low stakes’ for the learner. These are powerful learning opportunities for all parties involved, when objectives and expectations are transparent: in short, when appropriate scaffolding or structure is in place. This contrasts with summative assessment which is used to ultimately assign a mark or to rank a student with respect to completion of a set of pre-determined tasks or learning outcomes for the semester. The combination of formative and summative assessment are typically used in higher education classrooms.
Common challenges and solutions for implementing an effective peer review practice
Regardless of the content of the assignment, the critical processes are scaffolding and incentivizing the peer review so that the information shared is useful and actionable, and is used for improvement. This requires motivating:
1) the serious responsibility of the reviewer,
2) the value of the process for the reviewer and
3) the assurance of the quality of feedback for the receiver.
These challenges find some of their solutions in a combination of explaining the motivation for peer review (transparency) as an activity that benefits both the receiver and the reviewer, providing clear objectives and expectations (a rubric), and incentivizing follow-up to the experience by both the receiver and the reviewer (reflection). Below are challenges of the peer review process, each followed by potential solutions.
I. CHALLENGE: Ensuring that the quality of feedback remains high, is useful, and specific. Peer review without clear objectives and good structure for the reviewer can at best be unhelpful and at worst, steer the receiver in the wrong direction.
SOLUTION: Using a rubric based on the learning objectives of the assignment
Rubrics can be challenging to get right. They must be approachable, and not extremely time consuming, but also must be guided by the learning outcomes expectations for which feedback is required. Used correctly, rubrics are excellent tools for formative learning. That is how they are intended here. As novice learners, peers often will not articulate differences between making stylistic suggestions and the more substantive suggestions that will improve the technical quality of the work they are reviewing. Creating a rubric that addresses 2 to 3 of the specific objective outcomes required for the assignment is a critical piece of successful peer review. The nature of these objectives might include:
- the appropriate use and nature of evidence,
- correct style and inclusion of citations, or
- the overall structure of the piece (if it is writing of a particular format).
Best to avoid inviting suggestions from peers that fall outside of the realm of the objectives, especially for first- and second-year students. Peers can pose questions or considerations, but “suggestions” may lack sufficient expertise and diminish the quality of structured feedback.
II. CHALLENGE: Incentivizing reviewer quality
When the focus of peer review is on the receiver using the feedback to improve their work, the motivation of the reviewer may be lacking, leading to poor feedback and a subsequent mistrust of that feedback by the receiver.
SOLUTION: Switching the focus to the reviewer includes adding a “quality of review” rubric for the receiver and a reflection by the reviewer
Provide incentive for the reviewer. Assign a brief critical “review of the review” by the receiver that carries with it some small weight for the reviewer. The reviewer can use this rubric to guide them and also benefit (incentive) from doing it well. A short rubric for this review would be based on the objectives for the peer review assignment. Objectives might be built around:
- the feedback being directly pertinent to the performance criteria stated in the assignment rubric,
- the feedback being specific enough to be actionable by the recipient, and/or
- the reviewer provided examples of ways to improve or referred the reviewee to valuable resources to support the comments.
Finally, a brief reflection about what the reviewer has learned about their own work through doing the review. This can be a separate piece, a discussion board submission, or part of the assignment rubric that the reviewer uses for their feedback.
My experience is that students often will not recognize the value to themselves as learners of sharing a thoughtful critical review with others. However, once they are reminded and asked to reflect on what they learned, they are able to apply much of the experience to their own work.
III. CHALLENGE: Motivating the receiver to use the feedback for improvement
For many students this step is already motivated by the desire for a good summative assessment outcome, and may not seem like a challenge at all. However, if the above-mentioned structures are not in place, recipients of student feedback will de-emphasize its use because they may consider that they ‘know better’ (and they might without all this structure) or they might decide to focus only on the feedback they gain from instructors. With ‘writing-intensive’ assignments, this is a lost opportunity, Depending on class size, instructors often don’t have the time to give such detailed feedback and the learning that happens between peers is lost.
SOLUTION: Requiring a guided reflection by the receiver
The short 1 to 2 paragraph reflection could be a separate assignment, however might be easier to track as an appendix to the final assignment. Structure, again, is important. Thus, using guiding prompts to direct the reflection may produce more valuable reflection.
- Invite the writer to consider how the review supported their work.
- To improve specificity, we can ask the student to provide an example of what they changed in the final assignment based on the feedback.
- Another option is to give the student an opportunity to share why they did not choose to use a particular piece of feedback based on some course information or other credible resource may produce more focused reflection.
Feedback is critical for learning, and one of the most time consuming aspects of an instructors work. Peer review is challenging for many reasons, and also one of the most beneficial ways for students to learn from one another. Without transparency, rubrics and clear expectations for all involved, it can be unsuccessful and ultimately frustrating and de-motivating.
It is worth the time to get right. It takes time to develop clear learning objectives for an assignment, clear objectives for the reviewer and the receiver, incorporating those into rubrics and reflections, and realizing it is a process that will improve as you and students use it. Like so many other student-centered and evidence-supported teaching practices that can yield deep learning, the structure in place around the use of tools, a cycle of practice, evaluation, and iteration will lead to iterative improvement in the experience and the outcomes!!
Happy teaching!