Tuesday Teaching Tips #16 05/21/24

Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip

Each week, the Faculty Collaborative for Teaching will bring you an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. The goals of these tips will be to add to your teaching toolbox, share resources on teaching, and alert you to upcoming teaching and learning opportunities from the Faculty Collaborative.

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: STUDENT PEER REVIEW

Student peer reviews offer a valuable opportunity for students to provide and receive feedback on each other's work, creating a deeper understanding of assignments and enhancing constructive feedback skills. This approach is particularly beneficial in larger classes where personalized feedback may be challenging. By incorporating the assignment rubric into the peer review process, feedback consistency is improved, and students are encouraged to focus on specific criteria essential for the assignment's success.

This week, we challenge you to include some kind of student peer review in your course. This could be focused on a small weekly assignment – such as a problem set or writing assignment – or a quarter-long final project.

Here’s one way to do it

Here are two of the many possible ways to incorporate peer review in your course this week:

Option #1: Peer review an assignment in class

Discuss what constructive feedback means and ask the students for examples from their experience.
Provide students with the same rubric that you will use to assess the final submissions of an assignment.
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. Include a chance for the students to talk through their feedback with each other.
Ask the students to turn in their peer review work – you can explain at the outset if this is something that is graded or you’re collecting simply to review and assign credit.

Option #2: Calibrated peer review of a sample assignment (in class or online)

Provide students with the same rubric that you will use to assess the final submissions on an assignment.
Have the students use the rubric to review a sample assignment that you create (or an assignment that you have permission to share from a previous quarter).
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 sample assignment on each criterion in the rubric.
Share your ratings and comments and ask students to discuss their ratings.
Discuss and come to an agreement as a class on a fair rating for each criterion.

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey.

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

Faculty Collaborative DRT page on Student Peer Review
“Teaching students to evaluate each other” – Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation
“Teaching Peer Feedback: How We Can Do Better” – Inside Higher Ed
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.

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by C.J. Gabbe on behalf of the Faculty Collaborative.

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