How to Motivate Students During Peer Review

By Katelyn Fish

You may have all sorts of great thoughts on the VALUE OF PEER REVIEW, or even have all sorts of STRATEGIES up your sleeves for implementing it—however, this doesn’t do you much good if your students simply refuse to engage. What follows are some ideas on how to motivate your students to peer review.

3 WAYS TO MOTIVATE YOUR STUDENTS

Rate the Reviewer

Society rates everything nowadays—wondering what restaurant to go to? Yelp.com has got you covered. Wondering which facial mask to purchase? Amazon has thousands of reviews just waiting to be read. Not sure if you want to watch that movie? rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, or commonsensemedia.com has your back. So why not bring this idea into the classroom? After students meet with a peer to get feedback on their paper, hand them back a form on which to “rate” the quality of the feedback they got. This could even influence the participation grade for the day. Teachers should moderate this, of course—but this may encourage your students to give quality feedback instead of just giving the global “nice work.” A “rate your review” form might look like this:

Create Expectations as a Class

Students may not want feedback on the things you as the teacher think they do. One way to make peer review time valuable to them is by allowing the class to determine expectations with you. This can either look like a class list of “things to comment on” on the board, or like each student being able to ask one “focus” question before a review session: “could you specifically look at my organization? I’m not sure if it is working.” By allowing students to be agents of their own learning, they will be more invested in the feedback they are giving and getting. In addition to creating expectations for what to comment on, students need expectations for how to comment. “In this world of reality-television-style judging . . . students [need] help to learn how to respond empathetically to each other’s writing” (Hovan 52). With your class, regularly reflect on “what kinds of comments help a writer to move forward with a piece and what kinds of comments make writers feel hopeless” (Hovan 52).

Extra Revisions, Extra Credit

If you are a believer in giving extra credit, one powerful way to use this tool is by promoting an application of peer review. This “facilitates extra learning” and rewards students for going above the minimum (Faud). Tell your students that they can have x amount of extra credit points if, when they turn in their final paper, they also turn in the feedback sheet their peer reviewer gave them. Have them circle 3-5 (or whatever number you feel is best) changes on their final draft that they made because of the feedback they received. This encourages students to not only reflect on the feedback they received but also make revisions because of it—and after all, that’s what we want with peer review, isn’t it?

Sources

Faud, Mutzaba, and Elva Jones. “Using Extra Credit to Facilitate Extra Learning in Students.” Winston-Salem State University, June 2012. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265281310_Using_Extra_Credit_to_Facilitate_Extra_Learning_in_Students.

Hovan, Gretchen. “Writing for a built-in audience: Writing groups in the middle school classroom.” Voices from the Middle, vol. 20, iss. 2, pg. 49-53. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1288617200?accountid=4488.