Peer Review General Principles
Peer review is a process by which students are asked to look at other students' work and provide feedback. While most commonly used for writing assignments, peer review can be used for any project or assignment where feedback would help students improve their work, such as student presentations, graphic design projects, software programming code projects, research studies, lab notebooks, infographics, videos or other media. Small groups can also provide peer review feedback to other groups. Through the peer review process, students learn more about the assignment topic itself by seeing other students' approaches and perspectives. Students also learn how to provide constructive feedback and how to incorporate feedback into their own work—skills they will need throughout their academic career and in the workforce.
Assigning peer review means all students get feedback before submitting a final version for a grade. This is a major benefit of using peer review, since depending on your class size, it may be difficult to provide comprehensive feedback on each student's work before they submit a final version. Using a rubric improves the consistency of feedback and guides students to look for specific criteria (e.g., required information, formatting, proper citation to prevent plagiarism) or to answer specific questions (e.g., Does the work answer the assignment prompt?).
Facilitating Peer Review
Preparing for Peer Review
- Create a rubric to guide the peer review process. Provide the same rubric that you will use to assess the final submissions and explain to the students that you would like them to review their peer’s work using the same criteria that you will use for grading.
- Create a peer review timeline with deadlines for first draft, peer review, and final draft after revisions. As peer review can take more time, you may want to reserve it for more difficult or complex assignments, where it is easier for students to make mistakes, omit information, etc.
- Identify any technologies that might help with some or all aspects of the peer review process, including but not limited to:
- Tools with in-line comments and/or tracked changes (e.g., Microsoft Office, Google apps): for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
- Apps: If your class uses iPads, consider using the iAnnotate app, which allows you and your students to highlight passages in a document and leave voice or text comments.
- Peer review tools: Calibrated Peer Review is a web-based tool created by UCLA.
- Plagiarism prevention tools: Some plagiarism tools have peer review capabilities, such as Turnitin's PeerMark system.
- Discussion forums
- ePortfolios: Students can post drafts, receive feedback via comments or drafts with tracked changes, post final drafts for grading, and write reflective statements about how their work changed based on the feedback.
- Camino/Canvas has a peer review function for assignments. Please note that some faculty have found this peer review feature in Camino to be challenging to work with. You may find one of these other tools easier to use.
Engaging Students
- Go through the peer review process with the students before asking them to do it.
- Explain and model to the students the importance of providing constructive feedback, asking questions, and making observations. The reviewer might suggest specific ways to improve, or simply note their reading experience. Give them some examples: “I didn’t understand this part.” “I wanted to know more here.” “This part really confused me.” “I wasn’t sure why you included this.” “This didn’t seem to support your point.” And so forth. Remind the students that they are not “correcting” their peers’ papers. Encourage them to focus on the larger elements of the project such as meaning and purpose. Think about whether or not you want them to edit each other's work and clarify that for them. .
- Model evaluating an exemplar in front of students (in-class) or create a screencast outlining your ratings for the exemplar and why you gave those ratings.
- Consider using a rubric and/or calibrated peer review strategies to further improve the results.
- Calibrated Peer Review (in-class, online or both): First, create a rubric that students will use for peer review and you will use to evaluate students' final work. Then, share that rubric with your students and discuss it with them. Have them use the rubric—in-class or as an assignment—to review a sample assignment that you create or have permission to use from a previous term. Next, use polling strategies (e.g., raise hands, clickers, Poll Everywhere) or an online tool (e.g., Google forms) to learn what ratings students gave to the exemplar assignments. Last, share your own ratings and comments and ask students to discuss theirs. Come to an agreement as a class on a fair rating for each criterion. This exercise is designed to make the peer review process more consistent, regardless of who reviews a particular student's assignment.
Additional Resources
Colorado State University. What is peer review and how do I use it?
Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation. Teaching students to evaluate each other
Inside Higher Ed. Teaching Peer Feedback: How We Can Do Better
Jamsen, K. (2014). Writing Across the Curriculum: Making peer review work. University of Wisconsin, Madison Learning and Support Services
Pearce, J.; Mulder, R. & Baik, C. (2009). Involving students in peer review: Case studies and practical strategies for university teaching. Melbourne, Australia: Centre for the Study of Higher Education - University of Melbourne.
Page authors:
Kevin Kelly, Lecturer at San Francisco State University
C.J. Gabbe, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Sciences and Faculty Collaborative
Last updated:
April 16, 2024