Peer review activities for BSL sessions

Peer review activities are an integral part of academic endeavour. Benefits of students engaging in peer review activities include improved assessment literacy, critical thinking and professional practice to say the least. In its simplest form students will give feedback on ephemeral events such as peer presentation while more complex activities will involve reviewing written or produced peer work against criteria and requiring written feedback.

Individual student perceptions or educational backgrounds may influence their appreciation of peer review. It is important to establish peer review as continuing practice and provide regular opportunities to encourage familiarisation with the process.

In BSL sessions, peer review can be placed as an informal activity to accompany other ‘core’ activities such as Presentations and as more structured activities following small group work (for example peer reviewing a one-minute paper).

How to implement this in your BSL session

Step 1: Prepare the review criteria

One of the most common student concerns around peer review is the variation in review quality. It is expected that individuals within student cohorts will have varied experience of peer review (if any) and it is therefore the instructor’s responsibility to level the playing field. This may be achieved by providing specific criteria, such as a rubric, for the reviewers to use – the aim is not for opinions to be voiced during peer review but for informed critique to be expressed. Ideally, these criteria will be in the same format/style as the ones used for summative assessment, which will help improve student assessment literacy.

Step 2: Groups or individuals?

In BSL sessions instructors will be seeking the most time effective solution to implementing peer review. In this case, putting students in groups to review work of other groups will be the most efficient way of conducting a peer review activity and int increases reviewer diversity. Consequently, it is reasonable to plan peer review activities around ‘core’ activities that are small group activities, leveraging the established group composition.

Step 3: Set up a suitable tool

To accommodate all students (campus and remote) an online tool could be used for students to document/submit their peer reviews. Tools such as Padlet, Miro or other shared document or wiki tools are suitable. For on-campus students who do not have access to a device in the room, you can ask them to work in pairs. For a more streamlined experience instructors can set up a Peer Review portal using Feedback Fruits which can include an easy-to-use rubric of criteria for review. Set up the peer-review activity in the LMS  and share the instructions with the students before the session.

Suggested peer review activities

• Peer review of student presentations
• Peer review of group activities