The litterature suggests many names for this method; peer review, peer assessment, peer evaluation or peer feedback. In this text we will refer to it under one term - peer review.
We recommend implementing peer review in your teaching if you wish to:
- Give more formative feedback to students on their work
- Activate students as the owners of their own learning
- Create alignment between teaching activities and assessment practices
- Heighten students’ capacity for judgement and making intellectual choices
In large classes it is often hard to find the time to give formative feedback to students on their performance – the teaching activity peer review can help you with this. Further, the activity helps the students to evaluate, critique, reflect, and articulate feedback. When students assess their own and others’ work, they are actively involved in the learning process and their independence and motivation is improved.
The essence of peer review is that the assignments will be evaluated by several persons, creating more extensive feedback than a teacher normally has time to produce. The students will be more familiar with the evaluation process and criteria and therefore trained in producing better assignments themselves.
Peer review is an old practice in teaching and learning but with e-learning the logistics and tiresome manual work is done automatically, thereby making it easier for the teacher to manage.
How to Implement Peer Review in your Teaching
You need 2 things to implement peer review:
- A student performance to assess (assignments, presentations, prototypes etc.)
- Clear criteria for excellence put in a rubric
A rubric is a set of criteria and standards that are used to evaluate the students’ performance. It articulates the expectations for the assignment, thus creating transparency of the evaluation process. The rubric is needed to guide the students in evaluating their peers work objectively and structured.
Read more about creating rubrics on the Peer Review tool page.
TIP: You can give students opportunity for self review before peer review, so that they’re familiar with the process.
TIP: Use the method in courses where there are 2 or more assignments during the semester so the students get to know your specific rubric and evaluation criteria.
Supporting Peer Review with Learning Technology
See recommended tools on the Peer Review tool page.
Reading and References
- Students assessing student - case studies on peer assessment. Wheater, Langan and Dunleavy, Manchester Metropolitan University Planet No. 15 Dec. 2005.
- Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Peer and Teacher Marks. Falchikov & Goldfinch. Fall 2000 vol. 70 no. 3 287-322
- Self- and Peer-Assessment Guidance in the Biosciences. Orsmond, P. (2004). Teaching Bioscience Enhancing Learning Series. Leeds. Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience.
- Incorporating student peer review and feedback into the assessment process. McGourty, J., Dominick, P., Reilly, R. R., & Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Symposium Frontiers in Education. (January 01, 1998).
- Youtube video (4:53)
- How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading by Susan M. Brookhart