Peer Review Strategies and Resources for Instructors
Peer review can be one of the most challenging writing process skills to carry out successfully. Some of the reasons students may struggle with peer review, or be resistant to the activity, might include:
- Lack of confidence about their own ability to give useful feedback
- Lack of confidence that their peers know enough to give them useful feedback
- Anxiety or embarrassment about sharing their work
- Difficulty reading a peer’s work in the time allowed for the activity, especially for readers with learning differences or ELL students, or who are simply self-conscious about their reading skills
- Being behind on the work meant to be reviewed in class
- Previous negative or unhelpful experiences with peer review
The strategies below attempt to anticipate and respond to some of these expectations or reactions from students, as well as provide ways to scaffold and structure peer review activities.
Note: Although these suggestions often refer to a single “reviewer,” they can be adapted or adjusted for small group work rather than pairs. You might choose to consider using a mix of paired and small group work throughout the term as seems most useful for different assignments or activities, or if your original method has not been as productive as you hoped.
Before a Peer Review is Assigned
- Consider asking students about their experiences with peer review and using these responses to develop a set of class norms or strategies together. Be sure to save these norms and attach them in your D2L, lesson slides, and/or in the peer review assignment instructions.
- Sample intro survey or entry ticket: Google forms version (Tips on editing Google forms can be found HERE)
- Emphasize that peer review is meant to benefit all participants: both those giving feedback and those receiving it.
- Consider sharing a personal example or story illustrating this experience.
- Emphasize and model using questions when reviewing a peer’s work rather than recommendations/corrections.
- Consider doing a roleplay with a volunteer student or a visiting writing or learning support specialist to model effective question asking.
- It may be helpful to term the process as “discussion” rather than simply feedback; this can help reinforce that the reviewer does not need to have “answers” to questions or observations, but can both help and learn by having a conversation.
- Emphasize that the primary value and purpose of peer review in this context is to look at “big picture” questions about the purpose of the assignment, fully developing an argument, etc, rather than line-editing or grammar/spelling issues.
- You might choose to model this verbally, or provide a written example, using a sample paper and demonstrating good feedback practices.
- For discrete, target concerns, consider creating a document with examples on a sentence or paragraph level of what you are looking for, common misunderstandings of the task, etc.
- Remind students of existing resources for any specific grammatical or mechanical concerns
- For example, https://owl.purdue.edu/ provides comprehensive grammar and research resources.
- Create ways to incentivize participation and completion of peer feedback activities in ways that center reflection and individual participation, such as asking students to complete a written reflection response, identify and describe specific revisions they intend to make, etc. Be explicit about how these points will be assessed.
Peer Review Structure and Activities
Use peer review at different stages of the writing process, rather than just written drafts; peer review can also be applied to outlines, finding and evaluating sources, etc. This may also help students who feel anxious or self-conscious about their writing feel more comfortable with the process.
Please see the dropdowns below for information on using templates to guide the process and strategies for implementation.
Provide students with a template or guiding document to help them focus on or prioritize content issues specific to the assignment or a discipline-specific skill you want to reinforce.
- These templates should be fairly detailed at the beginning of the term and then may become less explicit as the term progresses. Here are some examples:
- CARES peer review template for student use
- Making Better Peer Reviewers tips and template
- Phrase the template in a form such as questions the reader can ask as they read, rather than a list of objectives or aspects to rate or check off.
- Phrasing this in terms of “I” questions can be useful for this–e.g. “What stood out most to me?” “What would I like to know more about?” “What did I learn from this paper/would I learn if I were unfamiliar with the topic?” as opposed to questions like “Does the paper include a thesis statement?”
- Structure the template to guide students in commenting on strengths as well as areas that can be improved.
- One method is CARES: Congratulate; Ask clarifying questions; Request more; Evaluate its value, Summarize–you can find a template for this format HERE.
- Show students how the template relates to the rubric and the purposes and goals of the assignment.
- Encourage students to share a specific question they have about their work or an aspect of their work on which they would like feedback or which they would like to discuss with their reviewer. Particularly at the beginning of the term, consider offering students some prompts or a ranked choice list of possibilities, as they may have trouble articulating these aspects.
If working at the full draft or partial draft stage, consider having students review a smaller section of text, rather than the entire paper–this will allow for students to spend more time on the actual review activity rather than simply reading.
Use intentional grouping so that students receive feedback from different classmates over the course of the term.
- One option would be to use a survey or entry ticket to determine how far in the writing process students are and group them accordingly–e.g., full draft, partial draft, outline, brainstorming, etc. Other groupings might be students who have chosen the same prompt, similar topics, etc.
- Grouping can also be a way to promote the conversational or discussion aspect of peer review–you could ask in a survey or other format what areas of feedback students are most interested in and group accordingly. You might also consider asking students which aspects of the assignment they feel most confident about.
- This could be done either by shared interests or complementary ones–for example, you could group students who all want to focus on their thesis statements, or instead pair a student looking for thesis feedback with a student who feels confident in their thesis but would like feedback on using evidence.
After the paired or small group peer review has finished, consider using a jamboard (or physical classroom equivalent) for students to collectively add notes about a helpful takeaway or idea.
Post Peer Review Activities
- Ask students to submit a short answer or form listing one idea they learned from being the reviewer, and one piece of feedback they received and how they will apply it. You can adapt the post-workshop survey found HERE as applicable. (Tips on editing Google forms can be found HERE)
- Remember to budget appropriate time for students to complete the post-peer review session feedback or reflection. If it will be done outside of class, make it clear that completing the form
- Consider using an anonymous survey to allow students to give honest feedback about the experience and consider those comments in structuring the next peer review session.
- Encourage students to network with each other for informal feedback or discussions (possibly via the Study Buddies function in the Navigate app)
- The resource linked HERE provides an excellent overview for using this function.
- Thank students for their participation and consider giving high fives or other recognition for students who showed significant engagement or leadership during the activity.
