Case Study: Peer Reviews and Reflective Discussion Boards

Abstract

Details of Process  

Clare is the module leader for a Research Methods module. She's been using a variety of technologies and media to reach out to students and engage them. These include discussion boards quizzes and an activity using a system built into canvas called peer review. This short write up will concentrate on the peer review and the discussion board activities.

The Peer Review Activity 

This was a formative task and it was completely up to the students as to whether they wanted to take part or not. Clare promoted the ideas and benefits of peer review particularly as a transferable skill for employment. She also provided some links to resources that would help students understand this process. She also highlighted how this task would help them read more efficiently and effectively. However, she did note that a number of students were underconfident about their abilities to complete this task and did not undertake it.  

The peer review activity was a real time live session where she asked the students to read the same article and write up a short paragraph that summarised it within an hour as an individual task. The students then submitted this to canvas and Clare used canvas to organise the distribution of those submissions so that every student had two submissions to peer review.  

The article was of a generic nature talking about how researchers approach the idea of culture. She selected that article because she didn't want to exclude any students that may have less knowledge of the wider curriculum she was teaching and which linked to their forthcoming assessment. The students were encouraged to leave annotations on the paper and comments using the actual marking criteria for the module assessment. All feedback was anonymized although the tutor did have an overview of who had written what for whom. Clare followed up the activity by providing feedback via Canvas for all those involved which included helping the students to understand the students’ comments. The students’ comments were overwhelmingly positive but many of them found suggestions to help their peers improved their own writing.  

Feedback from the students highlighted how they found this useful in understanding the process of marking, thus giving them a better understanding of this process and their role within it. The feedback from the process also included comments about how daunting it was for students and how some of them found that this put them in a position of power which some found difficult as they believed that they were not worthy of passing comment on another student’s work. All the students agreed that this had changed their viewpoint on the assignment process. They enjoyed the challenge of being asked to write academically early on in the semester. So, they appreciated it but also hated being put on the spot. The students that took part would like more of these activities and Clare is already working on an idea for an annotated bibliography task in a similar way.  

Reflecting on this Clare believes that what can help improve this is for the students to know each other better and form greater levels of trust, providing more information for the students to highlight the benefits that this could bring them and reduce the anxiety it may be causing them.

Discussion boards

Clare has used a number of discussion board activities so far on this module, these tend to be tied to some type of activity around the theme for the lecture that week. The resources she offers the students to interact with are carefully selected to include something to read, something to listen to and something to watch. This is to maximise the medium by which the students can gain an understanding of the topic. They are not expected to engage with all of the resources but to pick the one which will help them the most.

An example of this would be a podcast she shared with students around building a research project. The students listened to somebody describe their research project design and were encouraged to discuss in the discussion board what questions they would ask this particular person. Students offered up questions, and this generated wider discussion with many students posting to each other.

Clare uses the discussion board setting that prevents students from reading the posts without first making a contribution. However, she did find that some students got around this system and didn't write more than a single word. Having said that it is still encouraging that students wanted to read each others’ contributions.

Clare spends a small amount of time each week following up on these tasks dipping in and out to offer up comments and encouragement. She finds now that she is used to the system that this is not over burdensome, as it helps her get an idea of how her students are doing and to make improvements to the sessions that follow each activity. Clare recommends talking to the skills@ljmu team, as they have many useful resources that can help the students improve their learning. Clare would like to continue with this process and improve it and has seen the possibility of offering a variety of methods for students to engage in the course as helping everyone.