How to Brand Peer Review Successful

In many classes, the announcement that it's time for peer review brings a smile to the teacher's face merely groans across the classroom.

Having students comment on each other's essays might seem similar a fun, effective activity with straightforward benefits, simply the negative clan that many students take with peer review reveals that the process is oft run ineffectively.

In order for students to acquire how to respond thoughtfully and constructively to their peers' work, teachers must make a number of careful choices about what peer review will await similar and avoid mutual pitfalls that hamper the process.

Why Peer Review is Important in Writing

If peer review is so hard to manage effectively, why carp? In that location are a number of unique benefits for both teachers and students.

BENEFITS OF PEER REVIEW FOR INSTRUCTORS

As the UC Denver Writing Center explains, advantages of peer review for the instructor include a reduced workload (yes, please!), more opportunities for introverted students to earn participation points, and stronger papers to course since students are encouraged to think through areas of defoliation before the paper is due.

BENEFITS OF PEER REVIEW FOR STUDENTS

Peer review has the potential to help students as well; in particular, it can assist students call back about texts more critically.

This is a skill that volition assist them identify strengths and weaknesses in their ain writing equally well every bit approach other course readings with a more advanced academic mindset.

These gains are particularly important because recent analyses bear witness that U.S colleges are "falling short when it comes to teaching students critical-thinking skills such as making cohesive arguments, assessing evidence and interpreting data."

Source: http://gse.harvard.edu

Peer review can also help students call back across themselves during the writing process.

Students often brainstorm by non because audition at all while writing, but peer review encourages them to consider a specific reader (e.g. the teacher or peer reviewer), which tin can ultimately atomic number 82 them to write for a broader academic audience.

The ability to enter into an existing academic conversation is a vital skill for college writers. Commencement to develop information technology in eye and loftier school tin aid prepare students for college writing and beyond.

The potential benefits of peer review for students are as well supported by the current research on teaching and learning.

The Education Endowment Foundation's summary of the most benign practices for teaching includes "feedback, peer tutoring, collaborative teaching, metacognition, and cocky-regulation—all components of effective peer review."

Specific studies have shown quantifiable academic comeback as a result of peer review. One 2016 study that focused on EFL students plant that, according to pre- and post-essay exam scores, "peer reviews contributed to an improvement in educatee writing abilities, which included improvements that were retained after the peer review practice ended."

PEER REVIEW, THEN, IS A HELPFUL TOOL THAT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO Ameliorate Not But THE WRITING BUT THE WRITERS THEMSELVES.

The Basics of Peer Review

I of the best ways to increment the chances that peer review will be successful in your classroom is to thoughtfully and intentionally program many aspects of peer review in advance.

According to the WashU Writing Eye, peer review works all-time:

  • With papers that are v pages or less
  • Later on a complete typhoon but while in that location is still substantial time for revision
  • When the first session is early in the yr
  • When the first session focuses on a shorter piece of writing (ane-2 paragraphs)
  • When reviewers are given specific tasks to complete (ex: "rephrase the thesis")

While these are skillful basic guidelines, there are still important (and fifty-fifty controversial) decisions to make near the nature of your peer review.

For example, depending on the size and dynamic of your class, you'll demand to determine whether students should work in pairs or groups to do peer review. In conjunction with that, it's important to decide whether the pairs or groups will rotate—both within a specific peer review session and over the course of the year.

There is currently no research consensus on the most effective way to run peer review, then you will take to decide what works best for your specific class.

BENEFITS OF PEER REVIEW IN GROUPS

The UC Denver Writing Center recommends putting students in groups of five and keeping them the same for the entire semester. It's easy to see how the static setup could lead to greater trust amidst students as the months progress and the larger group could benefit students by giving them a broader prepare of responses to their work.

Mr. Olio, a high school English teacher featured by the Educational activity Channel, prefers to put students in groups besides, calling them "critical friends groups" rather than "peer review groups" to emphasize the ongoing relationships among peer reviewers.

If y'all decide to assign larger groups, it is even more of import to have an established peer review protocol for students to follow in order to avoid chaos.

One NCTE guide to peer review recommends that yous have students read their peers' papers before coming to form to speed upward the procedure while working in groups. In his class's peer review process, Mr. Olio tells his high school students to start with their "warm and fuzzies" nigh each paper so motion to "cooler feedback" and later invite the writer back in for clarifying questions.

Writer silence until the terminate of the word is an important part of Mr. Olio'southward protocol. He believes that asking writers to just absorb the discussion until the designated question time at the end "forces students into an understanding that their text is indeed a text"– they won't be able to stand over readers' shoulders and defend it in real life.

Whatsoever your protocol looks like, writing it up on the board every time your students do peer review (and referring to it often) will be a good commencement to an organized process for grouping peer review.

BENEFITS OF PEER REVIEW IN PAIRS

Despite the advantages of small-scale group revision, some teachers believe that paired peer review is more helpful for their students.

Paired review is more intimate, which can allow writers and readers to be more vulnerable nigh their questions and concerns, and some teachers believe that having students look at fewer papers increases "the likelihood that each paper receive[southward] a quality response from at least i editor."

As with group peer review, it is important to establish a routine for paired review, though this tin can look dissimilar. For example, in paired review, it is more possible to read papers aloud, which can be a valuable tool for writers to spot everything from typos to lack of transitions in their own writing.

One writing professor has their students starting time every peer review session with 2 printed papers: i for their reviewer and the other for themselves.

Equally the writer reads the paper aloud to their reviewer, the writer marks bug and areas to come back to on their re-create of the essay. Later, the partners fill out a checklist and discuss suggestions for revision together.

This professor and so has students switch partners, which happens at least one time for each essay. This fashion, "students could compare reviewers' responses and decide whose advice would be the all-time to follow."

In addition, "if both reviewers pointed out the aforementioned errors or suggested a unlike way to approach a topic, the student could exist reasonably bodacious that they needed to heed the advice."

Another professor just has students partner up once per paper but makes sure that students have different partners for each paper across the semester, totaling at least three partners per semester. This manner, students have the chance to interact with unlike kinds of writers and dissimilar kinds of papers—all with the noesis that if this match isn't platonic, it'south also non permanent.

How to Give Peer Feedback on Writing

Even more important than the number of people with which students volition discuss their papers is the content of their give-and-take. Every bit the facilitator of peer review, it's important for y'all to narrow the range of their discussion.

Grammar

For example, many guides to peer review recommend that teachers discourage editing and extensive discussion of grammar.

The UC Denver Writing Center explains that "grammar teaching is not generally appropriate for a rough draft" since "students are unable to transfer grammatical feedback to other writing" and "edits volition probably be lost during the revision procedure."

In the same vein, i teacher reminds students earlier peer review that "it's a waste of fourth dimension to polish a sentence that you lot subsequently make up one's mind you lot don't need."

Marco Learning gives our virtual grading administration similar advice, and if you lot use our newspaper grading service for teachers, you lot'll notice that our trained graders tend to prioritize higher order concerns such every bit argument, evidence, and organization when providing feedback to students (unless a teacher specifically directs graders toward sentence-level concerns).

EVALUATOR VS. READER

However, while many instructors are in understanding about focusing on argumentative aspects of papers, a more controversial topic is whether students should give responses as an evaluator or stick to responding equally a reader.

One professor feels strongly that providing "articulate actions and suggestions" is the most helpful way for students to reply to writing as it is a "grade of peer education, a powerful learning strategy for the reviewer." Accordingly, some teachers will give reviewers the same rubric that they will use to grade the newspaper rather than a peer review checklist.

That said, many other teachers experience that students are "non necessarily… qualified to use these criteria finer, and they may feel uncomfortable if they are given the responsibility to pronounce an overall judgment on their peers' work."

Instead, the director of the University of Minnesota Centre for Writing actually forbids the apply of the word "should" and instead asks students to "phrase their responses in 'I' linguistic communication ('I hear…,' 'I'm dislocated when….,' 'I'd like to hear more about…'" In this model, the reviewer is not an uncomfortable surrogate for the teacher at all but rather a mirror for the reader to encounter their own ideas reflected dorsum to them.

There is, of grade, a third way also, where students are not "outlawed" from giving suggestions when necessary merely are generally encouraged to provide comments almost their feel as a reader.

Regardless of what yous end up choosing—grammar or no grammer, reader or evaluator—it is of import to set your preferences as clear guidelines for your students before they commence on their beginning peer review session.

Looking Forward

Integrating a successful peer review framework in your classroom takes time and planning, only the benefits speak for themselves. As an educator, edifice peer review into your writing process will allow you lot to spend less time grading and more time on the other of import instructional tasks you dearest similar designing innovative lesson plans and working with students one-on-one. Peer review will also allow your students to build disquisitional thinking and analysis skills, while growing and developing as writers.

Looking for more than data on this topic? Cheque out Marco Learning's How to Make Peer Review Successful – Part 2.