Designing peer feedback and review opportunities

Peer feedback is a collaborative learning strategy where students give, receive and use qualitative comments by peers to support, improve and accelerate learning (Hoo et al., 2021). Peer feedback enables students to improve their self-assessment, whilst exposing them to different ways of approaching a task. The process of peer feedback is recognised as a valuable tool to enhance student learning in providing a critical skill for future professional careers (University of Oxford, 2024).

Closely related to peer feedback is the notion of peer review, which focuses on more formal evaluative processes. While peer feedback is often informal and intended to shape work before final submission, peer review typically involves applying predetermined criteria to assess the quality of a peer’s work. By engaging in both processes, students gain more in-depth insight into assessment criteria, strengthen their evaluative judgement, and cultivate the critical thinking abilities crucial for academic and professional success.

Why?

"Peer involvement in assessment processes should be more than just grading peers’ work and comparing the scores with those of the tutor."
-  (Liu & Carless, 2006, p.282)

Peer review, in particular, challenges the traditional view of the teacher as the sole authority on knowledge. Involving students in the evaluation process fosters a collaborative learning environment where learners can gain insights from their peers' perspectives. This practice promotes critical thinking, independent judgement, and deeper engagement with the subject matter (University of Melbourne, 2022). 

The value of peer feedback in your teaching is that it can:

• enhance pre-class discussions and promote more advanced conversation
• provide an opportunity for students to refine their judgement with guidance from a tutor
• allow peers to give focused feedback on areas such as presentation, structure, clarity, and body language
• encourage constructive feedback by highlighting strengths and areas for improvement
• help students understand and apply criteria and standards during revision
• offer a way to review practice work before the tutor provides final feedback
• support detailed feedback on drafts, refining arguments, structure, and style

Peer feedback activities provide an opportunity for students to bridge the gap between current and desired performance through reflection, reasoning and peer discussion (Lyu et al., 2023).

The process of peer feedback has several benefits for students (Simonsmieier et al., 2020) including:

• active engagement in the learning process by assuming the role of both reviewer and reviewee
• improved performance and motivation generated through the provision of feedback to peers
• identifying errors and areas for improvement when receiving feedback
• development of objective standards for quality of work
• enhanced self-regulation, metacognition and academic achievement

How?

Designing peer feedback tasks

Timing and sequencing the peer feedback

When designing peer review tasks or peer feedback opportunities, ensure that sufficient time is allocated for students to receive their feedback and apply the recommendations in future assignments.

Explore the tools and technologies available to facilitate the peer review process

Within Moodle, peer review on a submission can be facilitated with the FeedbackFruits Peer Review tool. This tool includes a range of options encompassing the peer review process, including automatic allocation of student submissions to reviewers.

For peer review tasks evaluating performance or skill (that do not have a submission), such as an oral presentation, the process can be facilitated using the FeedbackFruits Group Member Evaluation tool.

The Moodle Workshop activity can also be used to facilitate peer review, particularly if your task has a focus on evaluating the quality of the peer feedback provided. However, the setup process may have a steeper learning curve than other tools. 

Use detailed rubrics

Rubrics can assist students in reviewing their peers, as well as developing their feedback skills, consider using a combination of qualitative comments and marks to allow for the development of skills associated with providing feedback.

Consider the number of reviewers

Determine the optimal number of peers to engage in the feedback process. Multiple reviewers can increase the reliability and consistency of feedback. When determining the ideal number of reviewers in your context, consider; the cohort size, time constraints and the nature of the task.

Consider if anonymity will be beneficial to learning outcomes

Anonymity encourages critical feedback while reducing bias and other external influences when reviewing work. FeedbackFruits tools provide an option for this. Whilst students are provided with anonymity, all marking staff can see submitters’ names for safety reasons.

Providing guidance for peer feedback

To support students in the peer review process, you can:

• explain the rationale and benefits of peer feedback to students
• use rubrics, checklists, or prompts to assist students in developing peer feedback skills
• model the feedback process and provide examples of good and bad feedback. Modelling helps students see exactly how constructive feedback can be phrased, as well as mistakes to avoid
• create practice opportunities for peer review

Reflection and implementing feedback

Students must be skilled not only in providing feedback but also in receiving, processing, and acting on it. To support this, include a self-reflection component that helps them analyse the experience of giving and receiving feedback. 

Potential prompts to encourage reflective practice could include:

• What are the main themes from the feedback I received?
• Which points do I agree/disagree with, and why?
• How can I action this feedback into my next draft or project?

This can further assist students in connecting the peer feedback and review process to their own learning.

References