Peer Review for the Online Environment

Peer Review
by Andrea Gorman



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Assignment Description

As a University Studies mentor, each term I guide students through the process of improving their academic writing skills. One aspect of this guidance is leading them in a peer review. This assignment takes my traditional peer review assignment and adapts it for an online environment.

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Assignment Instructions

Instructor will post a statement and the following instructions for the class to outline them on the assignment and attach a list of the students' assigned groups along with their preferred emails. 

*The students should be in groups of three to lessen the inconvenience if one of their group members chooses not to participate.

• View the attached list to find the contact information for your group members

• Email the members of your group to start planning your approach

  
  
  • Decide who will be responsible for creating the Google document

    
    
  • Assign who will read whom's paper

    
    
  • Set timelines for when the papers should be posted, how long you'll have to read each other's work, and when feedback (notes on the Google doc) should be posted by 

    
    
• Create a Google document for your group to collaborate on

• Share the document with the instructor as well

• If you are unfamiliar with how to use Google docs. You can learn more here: Google Docs Overview

• Read the following before you start reviewing your peer's paper: 

  Purdue Owl Peer Review

• Post the rough draft of your term paper for your peers to review in the shared Google doc. Read the rough draft you've been assigned by your group (or both papers) and give feedback using the “comments” feature on Google docs to annotate the document

• After you've review the feedback from your peer(s), think about what was most helpful and why, then write them a “thank you” email (about 250 words) (cc instructor) explaining what you found to be valuable about the feedback they gave you and how it helped to improve your term paper.

• Finally, write the instructor an email (about 250 words) reflecting on the assignment. Discuss what you learned, how you contributed to your group (did you set up the Google doc, set time lines?), which aspects of the assignment worked well, and give suggestions about how you might change the assignment. 

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Evaluation & Accountability

The students evaluate their peers through the “thank you” email they write. This aspect of the assignments as works to build community by the gesture of thanking their teammates and empowers the students by receiving positive feedback about their ability to help their peers improve their writing.

Additionally, the students evaluate themselves, their peers, and the assignment itself in their reflection written to the instructor. Asking students for feedback on the assignment itself can be quite helpful as many of the students are technology natives. Their feedback might include suggestions of more effective tools to use, different approaches other instructors have used for peer review you might want to take into account, or simply help you to clarify the assignment instructions. This aspect of the assignment keeps the students accountable to themselves and their team.

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Technology

• Email

• Google docs

• D2L course homepage