plan the activity

The context of your class should guide decisions about forming peer groups, organizing materials, and timing of the peer review activity.

Below are a few non-exhaustive questions to consider when coordinating peer review. Click the underlined text to access resources.

WATCH & LISTEN

Chris & Shane discuss coordinating a peer review (2:54).

Peer Review Logistics_v3.mp4

What are the learning goals of the peer review?

The peer review learning goals should reflect the writing assignment goals. Consider also asking your students about their goals for the peer review and what they hope to learn about their own and other’s writing from the process.

What will students do for the peer review?

Less is more with a peer review task. Narrow the task by crafting a few prompts for peers to respond to about each other's writing. This helps student give more "readerly" feedback by encouraging them to respond to the content and ideas of their peers as readers and resist editing or proofreading. Visit these resources for more ideas and guidance on creating "readerly" peer review prompts.

How many students?

Class size affects your time management capabilities, your materials, your assessment decisions, and student autonomy. Keep class size in mind throughout the planning process, and later in choosing a peer review tool.

How many peer review groups?

Peer reviews work well in groups of 3-4. You may consider larger groups for larger classes, and to anticipate students who don't show up for their partners. Be mindful of what size groups your students can reasonably navigate in order to organize and complete the work among themselves in the time allotted.

Who chooses groups? You or students?

There are pros and cons to each approach, especially in terms of class size and how much time you have. In a small course where folks may know each other, or in a course where students are already working in groups, students might create their groups. For a large course or one where students don't know each other that well, teacher-created groups are recommended. Having students self-group will take longer than you assigning groups.

Who enrolls students into the groups?

This decision will be mitigated by the tool you choose and how much time you have. In D2L Brightspace, students can self-enroll into groups, you can manually enroll them, or the system can auto-enroll groups. Keep in mind this takes longer than random auto-enroll. In Google Drive, you or students can set up the folders and share them accordingly. Setting up Google Drive takes longer than setting up D2L. More details on this can be found on the Tools page.

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