Introduce Peerceptiv to Students

Before the first Peerceptiv assignment, it is important to explain what Peerceptiv is and how the peer review process will benefit your students. As your students “buy in” to peer review and see its value, they will put forth more effort and engage in more thoughtful reviewing. 

Read on for tips and resources that will help you explain Peerceptiv to your students.

Introducing Peerceptiv

• Use this Student Information Slides Presentation to introduce students to Peerceptiv and discuss the benefits of peer review. You can make a copy of the presentation to edit it for your class (suggested edits include removing LMS and student purchase information if not relevant to your course) and then upload or link your copy to your course website or LMS. 
• Post or distribute this Student Overview Handout.
• Post the applicable student tutorial videos.
• Include the applicable assignment description in your syllabus.
• If applicable, explain your involvement in the grading or reviewing process. If you plan to review or benchmark submissions, make that clear to students. Remind students that they are rating - not grading - their peers' work and grades are determined by a combination of factors including instructor input and peer ratings.
  
• Explain to students why you think peer reviewing is important and how it accomplishes the learning objectives for your class.
• It is very important to explain the benefits of peer review - research has shown that students who participate in the giving side of the feedback loop improve more than students who merely receive feedback.* Research has also shown that multi-peer feedback is more beneficial than feedback from a single expert instructor.**

Before an Assignment

• Remind students of the deadlines for this assignment. They should be aware of all applicable deadlines (submission, review, and feedback). Peerceptiv will also send notification emails to students at the start of each phase of the assignment and 24 hours before each deadline closes.
• Go over the rubric with students. They need to know what they are assessing and what your expectations are for quality of work. Make sure terms are clear and that students know what qualifies as the highest level work.
• Link to the article on Uploading a submission. 
• Link to the Reviewing Knowledge Base section.

After an Assignment

• Explain how to apply the feedback that students received. 
• Make it clear that students were graded on their submission, reviewing, and task grade. Point students to the Knowledge Base section on Grades in Peerceptiv. 

Common Student Objections to Peer Review

Research Cited

*Wooley, R., Was, C., Schunn, C.D., & Dalton, D.W. (2008). The Effects of Feedback Elaboration on the Giver of Feedback, from the proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science society.

**Cho, K., & Schunn, C. D. (2007). Scaffolded writing and rewriting in the discipline: A web-based reciprocal peer review system. Computers and Education, 48(3), 409-426