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Unlocking learners’ evaluative skillsA peer review perspective
David Nicol
Emeritus Professor of Higher Education. University of StrathclydeVisiting Professor, University of Ulster and Swinburne, Australia
Sheffield-Hallam University 15 Sept 2015
Peer review
Definition of peer review
Peer review is an arrangement whereby students produce a written assignment then review and provide comments on assignments produced by peers in the same topic domain.
In peer review, students produce feedback reviews for peers and receive feedback reviews from peers.
Plan for Session Brief introduction to peer review
You experience peer review – produce assignment (5 mins) and review two peer assignments (10 mins)
Reflection and discussion
Drawing on case examples – engineering, sociology bio-chemistry
Introduction
Research on peer review has been confounded by three factors (i) an over-focus on peer assessment rather than peer review (ii) a bias towards examining the benefits of receipt of feedback reviews rather than the production of feedback reviews and (iii) studies examining general benefits of peer review without distinguishing its component parts.
Today the focus is primarily on producing feedback reviews
Your assignment Write a convincing argument for having students review
the work of peers (the reviewing component only). Provide evidence for your argument (from literature, logical, from you own experience, convincingly anecdotal) and identify and respond to any obvious counter-arguments.
Criteria for good argument are: convincingness of argument (ii) evidence in support of argument (iii) identification and responses to obvious counter-arguments.
Five minutes for this task Normally students can produce about 10-14 lines of text Assume it is a draft or initial free writing
The peer review task
Review and provide feedback comments on the work of two peers using the given criteria.
Argument from peer 1I think that students would gain understanding of their own work in the process of reviewing the work of peers. When reading another student’s work, the reviewer would more likely be able to see areas where improvements could be made. It is often the case that it is easier to identify others’ weaknesses than one’s own. When reviewing the work of others, the student would engage in a process of comparison with their own work. This leads to a form of reflection otherwise not available. However, it could be argued that students are not well-qualified to comment on the work of others. They do not have the knowledge of the subject or the pedagogical training to make valuable comments. This I do not agree with. Students are often close to each other in their level of knowledge and writing and would therefore be able to give constructive criticism. At the same time, giving criticism would heighten awareness of their own performance.
Argument from peer 2Having students review the work of peers should be a regular activity in higher education because if students do this they will see the way others tackle the same assignment and they will learn and get ideas from this. Also, when they review they will have to apply some criteria and this will help them to understand these criteria better. In my experience students often produce poor assignments because they do not understand what is expected, not because they cannot do the work. Indeed, when I organise peer discussion of criteria before a task this results in better quality work. However, it is clear that there might be problems of plagiarism as in reading peers assignments it is likely that students will copy without owning the ideas themselves. This could be tackled, however, by having students review and just say what they would do to improve their own assignment (if they had the opportunity) without actually getting them to do it. In this way, they would provide evidence of interpretation rather than copying.
Criteria/questions for the peer review
(i) Summarise the core of the argument written by each peer in one sentence.
(ii) a. Identify any hidden assumptions in thisargumentORb. Identify and formulate a good feedback principle from the argument presented by this writer
(iii) Make one suggestion that would strengthen the argument. Give a reason for your suggestion in a sentence or two.
Time = 10 minutes = 5 minutes each review
Discussion and reflection
You: Reflection on your experience – the learning from peer review
Me: present of some recent research findings using ‘student quotes’
Reflection and discussion What did you learn from this peer review
exercise? How did you go about the reviewing task? What ‘mental processes’ are elicited through
the reviewing activity?
What was the most valuable aspect of the reviewing process?
Rate each of the following on the following scale (where 0 is not valuable, 1 is of some value and 7 is very valuable).1.Seeing how peers had approached this task
2.Engagement with the criteria/questions
3.Comparing the peer assignments with your own
4.Making evaluative judgements about others’ work
5.Writing the feedback commentaries
6.Comparing one peer’s work with the other 7. Thinking about changes to your own assignment
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Research: what do students say?
Engineering Design
Peer Project case example DM 100 Design 1: first-year class
Dr Avril Thomson, Course Leader, Design Manufacturing and Engineering Management (DMEM), University of Strathclyde [email protected]
Caroline Breslin, Learning Technology Adviser, University of Srathclyde [email protected]
Funded by JISC: www.reap.ac.uk/PEERToolkit/Design.aspx
Engineering Design 1 82 first-year students Design a product – ‘theme eating and resting in
the city’ Research in groups (in city, in library etc.) Individually produce a Product Design
Specification (PDS) – detailed requirements for and constraints on design (rationale, performance,standards, manufacturing etc)
Given a PDS exemplar from another domain to show what’s required (stainless steel hot water cylinder)
Online learning environment: Moodle and PeerMark part of Turnitin suite
DM 100: Design 1Peer review task Individually, each student peer-reviewed and
provided feedback on the draft PDS of two other students
Criteria: (i) completeness (ii) convincingness of rationale (iii) specificity of values (performance) (iv) one main suggestion for improvements with reasons
Students used experience, giving and receiving feedback to update own PDS
Peer review not assessed directly but 10% marks for professionalism which included participation in peer review.
Evaluation
1. Online survey completed by 64 students2. Focus group interviews3. Peer review comments recorded online4. Course work marks compared to previous
years
Results 1
Which aspects of the peer review did you learn from?
Giving feedback 10.9% Receiving feedback 26.6% Giving and receiving feedback 54.7% Neither giving or receiving 7.8%
Results 2
Did you modify your initial submission as a result of the peer review activity?Yes, as a result of the peer review given
23.4%
Yes, as a result of the peer review received
25.0%
Yes as a result of the peer review given AND received
28.1%
No 21.9%
N/A 1.6%
Results: student comments
If yes, please give specific examples of modifications (n=41)
[Comments are from different students]
I added a couple of paragraphs and improved existing paragraphs, this added two full A4 pages to my work
I provided more specific numeric values and expanded my rationale after seeing someone else’s PDS and after receiving feedback
I added a legal and patents section Improved the rationale, included more facts I made some of my numeric points more specific to
my final design concept.
Results: learning from RECEIVING reviewsPlease give examples of what you learned from RECEIVING peer
reviews from other students (n=54)
Specific content mentioned: Depth of analysis needed, more numerical data and figures, stronger rationale, how to structure it better etc.
Receiving peer reviews gave me insight into what others thought of my work and gave me a direction to improve (reader response)Where the PDS was confusing to understand (reader response)
Parts that I had previously missed were brought to eye such as market competition (noticing)
The person who peer reviewed my PDS gave me positive feedback which helped me a lot (motivational)
Not much, they...[the peer reviews]...weren’t very good (no value)
Results: learning from PROVIDING reviews
Please give examples of what you learned from PROVIDING peer reviews of other’s work (n=47)
How to look at work critically that isn’t your own [critical judgement]Thinking from a critical point of view [critical judgement]
I was given a greater understanding of the level of the work the course may be demanding [attention to expectations/criteria]Allowed me to see from an assessor’s perspective [expectations/criteria]
When giving advice to people on theirs, it gave me greater perception when reviewing my own work by listening to my own advice for example [reflection/transfer]I had a chance to see other peoples work and aspects of their work that I felt were lacking in my work, this helped me to improve my work [reflection/transfer]
Results: How you carried out peer review
Could you make any comments about how you carried out the peer review? How did you evaluate the quality of the work to provide a response to the peer review questions? (n=37)
I compared it to mine and ...and said how I would improve itPartly by comparing my work to theirsI tried to think about what I wrote and whether this product design specification was better or worse
Focus groups How did you go about reviewing?
‘I read it through and compared it with what I had done to see if they had put something I had not done and then I added it in if they hadn’t. The four questions...[criteria provided by the teacher]...were useful as they provided a framework for the review. If we hadn’t had the questions it would have been difficult. I did the reviews separately and then answered one then the other. The first was a better standard than the other – so I used the ideas from the better one to comment on the weaker one. I also read the guidelines in class when I did the peer review. There were ideas from the good one that I hadn’t even thought of in mine’
Results: reviewingIn the focus groups the effects of the review questions (criteria) was probed further. Typical comments were:
You compare it (the other student’s work) to the criteria but then in the back of your mind you’re comparing it to our own at the same time. I went down the questions and compared it to my own..I was trying to think what has this person done. Have they put in more effort or knowledge than me.I went through the questions keeping my own in mindYou’ve got what you’ve done at the back of your mind while going over theirs so you see where you’ve gone wrong without anyone pointing it out so you learn it yourself
‘Reviewing is grounded in comparisons with students’ own work’ (Nicol, Thomson and Breslin, 2013)
Benefits of reviewing (1)
Reviewing elicits multiple acts of evaluative judgement 1. Evaluate peer’s work against own2. Evaluate one peer’s work against another (and own)3. Evaluate work against given criteria to produce response
The pre-condition for these effects1 Students must first have produced an assignment in the ‘same
domain’ as those that they are asked to review
To what extent does your experience resonate with this finding?
Benefits of reviewing (2) Students both create and apply evaluative criteria
1 Create criteria as they compare work with own (holistic judgements)2 Apply explicit criteria (analytic) to instances of practice when the
produce a written response (analytic judgements)3 Simulates what experts do when they make evaluative judgements
‘Through reviewing students generate richer criteria than those provided by the teacher but sounder criteria than those they might be able to formulate on their own’ (Nicol, Thomson and Breslin, 2013)
Nicol, D., Thomson, A and Breslin, C. 2013. Rethinking feedback in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
Focus groups What do you think is best for learning – giving or
receiving feedback?
‘For me it would probably be to give feedback because I think seeing what other people have done is more helpful than getting other people’s comments on what you have already done. By looking at other people’s work you can see for yourself what you have forgotten or not even thought about. When people give feedback on yours they generally just talk about what is there. They don’t say, well I did this on mine and you could put that in yours.’
Focus groups What do you think is best for learning – giving or
receiving feedback?
I think when you are reviewing...[the work of peers]...it’s more a self-learning process, you’re teaching yourself; well, I can see somebody’s done that and that’s a strength, and I should maybe try and incorporate that somehow into my work. Whereas getting...[teacher]... feedback you’re kind of getting told what to do; you’re getting told this is the way you should be doing it, and this is the right way to do it. You’re not really thinking for yourself.... I think...[reviewing]... would help you not need so much of teacher feedback, if there was more of this. Whereas, I think if you’re not being able to do...[reviewing]... then you will always be needing more...[teacher feedback]...
Peer review: a new perspective on feedback
Students construct feedback ‘meanings’ for themselves while they produce them for others
Puts feedback processes in the hands of the student See many examples of the same work of different quality Reduces their need for teacher feedback Suggests another focus for teacher feedback – helping students
calibrate the quality of their own judgements
Nicol, D., Thomson, A and Breslin, C. 2013. Rethinking feedback in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(1), 102-122
Feedback in professional and workplace settings
1. In the professions, feedback never comes from a single source: task is usually to evaluate, weigh up and reconcile and respond to different and sometimes contradictory feedback perspectives.
2. Professionals are not just ‘consumers’ of feedback but also ‘producers’
Nicol , D. Thomson, A and Breslin, C. 2013. Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Submitted to Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
Principles of good peer review design1. Encourage an atmosphere of trust and respect2. Use a range of different perspectives for the review
tasks3. Give practice in identifying quality and in formulating
criteria4. Require well-reasoned written explanations for
feedback response5. Facilitate dialogue around the peer review process6. Integrate self-review activities into peer review designs7. Encourage critical evaluation of received reviews 8. Provide inputs that help reviewers calibrate their
judgementsNicol, D (in press) Guiding principles for peer review: unlocking learners’ evaluative skills. See also http://www.reap.ac.uk/PEERToolkit/Design.aspx
Design decisions1. Target task – factual or open-ended (design, computer
programme, essay, report etc)2. Unit for task: individual, pair, group3. Unit for review: individual, pair, group work4. Matching reviewers: random, by ability, by topic 5. Number of reviews – more is better6. Privacy: anonymous or known reviewer and/or author7. Peer review criteria – not-given: guidelines: fixed format8. Review focus: holistic v analytic, content or process 9. Use of received reviews: drafts, self-review, new task10. Requesting and responding to feedback11. Grading: no marks, marks for participation, for reviews,
marks for self-review after peer reviewAvailable at http://www.reap.ac.uk/PEERToolkit/Design.aspx
ReferencesBoud, D. and Associates (2010) Assessment 2020: Seven propositions for assessment reform in higher education. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Available from www.assessmentfutures.comCowan, J. (2010) Developing the ability for making evaluative judgements, Teaching in Higher Education, 15(3), 323-334.Nicol, D. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006), Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218Nicol, D (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback in mass higher education, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 35:5, 501-517Nicol, D (2010) The foundation for graduate attributes: developing self-regulation through self and peer assessment, QAA Scotland, Enhancement Themes. Available at: http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/resources/publications/graduates-for-the-21st-century Nicol, D (2011) Developing students’ ability to construct feedback, QAA Scotland, Enhancement Themes. Available at http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/resources/publications/graduates-for-the-21st-centuryNicol, D (2013), Resituating feedback from the reactive to the proactive. In D. Boud and L. Malloy (Eds) Effective Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: understanding it and doing it well, Routledge UKNicol, D., Thomson, A. and Breslin, C. (2014) Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: A peer review perspective, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102-122Nicol, D. (in press) Guiding principles of peer review: unlocking learners’ evaluative skills. In Advances and Innovations in University Assessment and Feedback. Eds C. Kreber, C. Anderson, N. Entwistle and J. McArthur. Edinburgh University Press.Sadler, D.R (2010) Beyond feedback: Developing student capability in complex appraisal, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 35:5, 535-550
1. Atmosphere of trust and respectWhy1. Requires commitment and collaboration to work2. Changes power relations: teacher gives up place of
authority3. Raises issues of academic integrityHow1. Explain why important e.g. for learning and in
professions2. Explain that purpose is formative not about marking
each other 3. Show how to give constructive feedback4. Model review process in tutorial (Draper, 2009)5. Engage students in discussing the merits themselves
2. Use a range of different perspectives
for the review tasksWhy: 1. Elaborates existing, and builds new, knowledge 2. Experts can evaluate work from many perspectivesHow: 1. Disciplinary perspective2. Holistic perspective (evaluate work as a whole)3. Stakeholder perspective (the nurse, doctor, patient)4. Reader- response perspective (i.e. non-judgemental)5. Graduate attributes perspective (e.g. ethical)6. Contrastive perspective (e.g. another theoretical
vantage point)
3. Give practice in identifying quality and in formulating criteria
Why: 1. Develops holistic judgement2. Helps students recognise and explain quality
rather than being told3. More like professional practice – where criteria
are emergent, tacit and cannot be fully codified.How:1. Don’t always give criteria 2. Students review and externalise criteria for
judgements3. And rank works and explain their ranking
decisions
4. Require well-reasoned written explanations for feedback responses
Why: 1. Engages students in knowledge construction/
elaboration and reflection2. Learn to use the discourse of discipline 3. Multiple reasons for evaluations lost if only a grade
or rating providedHow: 1. Specify length of response required (sentence,
paragraph)2. Extended rationale usually required3. Not just about ‘critiquing’ (e.g. alternative
idea/perspective)
5. Facilitate dialogue around the peer review process
Why: 1. Discussion will enrich the review process leading into
peer learning2. Furthers reflection & knowledge elaboration: questions,
extended conversations, re-processing of ideasHow: 1. Pairs or groups – to produce the assignment, the
reviews, the criteria or the responses to reviews2. Students formulate questions for the reviewer3. Discussion with teacher in class about the task and/or
reviews
6. Integrate self-review activities into peer review designs
Why: 1. Facilitates transfer of skill to students’ own work2. Strengthens development of evaluative judgement3. Helps develop distance and objectivity
How: 1. Self-review after peer review on same assignment2. Self-review then peer review (e.g. asking questions
for reviewers to answer about the work)3. Responding to the reviewers’ comments/questions
– revisit own work
7. Encourage critical evaluations of received reviews
Why: 1. Simulates professional practice – develops
evaluation and critical skills2. Ensures attention to feedback, deeper
processing and further knowledge building by students
How: 1. Have students respond to reviews (e.g. develop
an action plan for improvement, identify inconsistencies in received reviews)
2. Encourage peer discussion of received reviews
8. Provide inputs that help students calibrate their judgements
Why: 1. Recognises and utilises teacher expertise2. Provides high level feedback on self-regulatory
abilities of students (Hattie and Timperley, 2007)3. Helps students develop their own evaluative expertise How: 1. Teachers provide feedback on students review
outputs2. Teachers select and highlight examples of quality
reviews produced by students3. Scaffold students’ reviewing activities by providing
them with a menu of questions teacher would ask about the work.
Example 2: Biochemistry labs
Peer Project case study Biochemistry: third-year class with 30 science
students (BM310)
Professor Peter Halling, University of [email protected]
Dr Sue Barnes, Learning Technology Adviser, University of Strathclyde [email protected]
Aims of Biochemistry pilot To ensure that students actively engage with,
process and use teacher feedback To develop students own skills in making
evaluative judgements and in producing feedback
Study possible because teacher had been producing feedback for many years on labs – saw this feedback data as a potential reusable resource
BM310: Biochemistry labs
Assessment and feedback – a summary
Wrote three lab eports Got feedback and mark from academic on one
(FAT) Got feedback from fellow students on other two
(EK and AKE) Gave feedback on two reports written by fellow
students Was given a mark for the quality of feedback on
one of these two reports
Scaffolded peer review taskThree conditions of support for peer review task:
Menu of Feedback Comments (MFC) e.g. ‘You are confusing the meaning of retention times and areas – retention times tell you nothing about whether a reaction is proceeding. It’s only the areas that tell you whether the concentrations are still changing’
Menu of Feedback Questions (MFQ) e.g. ‘Have they understood the link with increased pH of the borate promoting full ionization of nitrophenol to the yellow nitrophenolate anion?’
No menu (NM) – must produce comments un-aided.
Findings
Analysis of students’ feedback on work of peers
Initial results show that the MFQ (feedback questions) led to better quality feedback comments than the MFC (feedback comments)
No Menu condition not significantly different from MFQ or MFC conditions.
However, further research needed as effects might be due to difficulty of questions and have not tested pairings of students for reviews.
FindingsSurvey responses: students’ reports
All reported that reviewing engaged them in comparing peer’s work with own work and with the menu template (MFQ or MFC). Most made a physical comparison.
Reported that MFQ made them think more than MFC and were more helpful for their understanding
Were less happy about the NM condition
Findings: MFC versus MFQ
The teacher’s feedback comments help me understand the basic point to the assignments, however the questions allowed me to understand the assignment better as I had to research the answers myself and this allowed me to gain a better understanding of the topic
I prefer the questions provided from the AK equilibrium because it made me think more about the right answers and it allowed me to write my own comments using the questions as guidance. Having feedback comments from the Enzyme kinetics made it too easy to just copy and paste previous feedback comments in and I did not understand what some of the feedback comments referred to.
Findings survey: No Menu (NM) condition
NM condition had mixed results as some students claimed that without any external input difficult to go beyond the ideas they had for their own work.
Without teacher support we only know what we answered – our perspective
Without the teacher feedback we lose an important area of the question we may not have known was even a requirement to answer
Highlights value of having an external reference point when providing feedback
Interpretation Students engage with teacher feedback while also developing
their evaluative skills to question others’ work. Teacher’s feedback on the peer review helps develop students’
own feedback skills. Implementation in a science discipline where feedback might
differ - about accuracy as well as quality of judgement Addresses issue that use of teacher feedback leads to ‘scripted’
responses (Boud, 2012). Enables feedback to become a reusable resource.
Cognitive benefits of feedback construction
1. High-level cognitive activity: students cannot easily be passive
2. Students actively exercise assessment criteria from many perspectives
3. Writing commentaries causes students to evaluate and rehearse their own knowledge
4. Evaluate different approaches to same work and learn that quality can be produced in different ways
5. Shifts responsibility to student – puts them in role of assessor exercising critical judgement
Cognitive benefits of feedback construction
6. Learn to evaluate their own work – as exactly the same skills are involved
Develops capacity to make evaluative judgements - a fundamental requirement for life beyond university. Also, this capacity underpins all graduate attribute development (Nicol, 2010)
Nicol, D (2011) Developing students’ ability to construct feedback, Published by QAA for Higher Education, UK
http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/resources/publications/graduates-for-the-21st-century
Enhancing evaluative judgement through peer review
Maximise the number of reviews within practical limits
Integrate peer and self reviews – would enhance transfer
Embed opportunities for dialogue in reviewing process
Broaden the scope of the review criteria –beyond ‘critiquing’
Make reviewing a regular activity Change focus of teacher feedback to commenting
on quality of peer reviews.
