Peer review is a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive feedback reviews from peers on their own work. Prior research has primarily examined the learning benefits that result from the receipt of feedback reviews, with few studies specifically exploring the merits of producing feedback reviews or the learning mechanisms that this activates. Using accounts of their experiences of peer review, this study illuminates students’ perceptions of the different learning benefits resulting from feedback receipt and feedback production, and, importantly, it provides insight into the cognitive processes that are activated when students construct feedback reviews. The findings show that producing feedback reviews engages students in multiple acts of evaluative judgement, both about the work of peers, and, through a reflective process, about their own work; that it involves them in both invoking and applying criteria to explain those judgements; and that it shifts c...

Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective

Improving the effectiveness of peer feedback for learning

The present study examined the effectiveness of (a) peer feedback for learning, more specifically of certain characteristics of the content and style of the provided feedback, and (b) a particular instructional intervention to support the use of the feedback. A quasi-experimental repeated measures design was adopted. Writing assignments of 43 students of Grade 7 in secondary education showed that receiving ‘justified’ comments in feedback improves performance, but this effect diminishes for students with better pretest performance. Justification was superior to the accuracy of comments. The instructional intervention of asking assessees to reflect upon feedback after peer assessment did not increase learning gains significantly.

Effective peer assessment processes: Research findings and future directions

Although feedback has a great potential for learning, students do not always make use of this potential. This article therefore reviews research literature on students’ use of feedback in higher education. This is done in order to find answers as to why some students do not use the feedback they receive and which factors are important in influencing students’ use of teacher feedback. Findings show that utility is not only a key feature for students’ use of feedback but also that some factors, such as lack of strategies for productively using feedback or lack of understanding of academic discourse, may hinder students’ possibilities to use the information formatively.

Facilitating productive use of feedback in higher education

Student revision with peer and expert reviewing

Peer review of writing provides an alternative to the traditional approach of practicing writing with feedback from an instructor. Most of the limited research on peer review has examined the general effects or focused on the effects of receiving feedback from peers. The current study focused on the effects of giving feedback, that is, on whether students learn to write better by reviewing peer writing. Sixty-one undergraduate students were randomly assigned to reviewing, reading, or no-treatment control conditions. Reviewers rated and commented on papers written by peers. Readers read the same papers without commenting. All students then wrote a paper in the same genre but on a different topic. Students in the reviewing condition significantly outperformed those in both other conditions on the quality of the report. Follow-up analysis indicated that comments coded as "problem detection" and "solution suggestion" were positively correlated with writing outcomes for students in the reviewing condition. This research provides support for the use of peer review of writing as a learning activity

Kwangsu Cho

Papers

Student revision with peer and expert reviewing

Learning by reviewing.