Peer Review Assignments

Peer review can help students:

• Give and receive constructive feedback.
• Engage with examples of their peers' work.
• Apply course criteria to evaluate work.
• Reflect on and improve their own work.
• Develop communication and feedback skills.
• Interact meaningfully with classmates in an online course.

Peer review is most effective when students understand both what they are reviewing and what useful feedback should look like.

Peer reviews are added through a Canvas Assignment. To set up a peer review:

1. Navigate to Assignments and create a new assignment.
2. Add the assignment instructions and submission requirements.
3. Enable Peer Reviews in the assignment settings.
4. Choose whether reviews will be assigned manually or automatically.
5. Determine the number of peer reviews each student should complete.
6. If appropriate, choose to make peer reviews anonymous.
7. Add a rubric or clear feedback criteria to guide the review process.
8. Save and publish the assignment.

Simply asking students to "provide feedback" may not result in meaningful reviews. Give students specific criteria or questions to consider as they examine their peer's work. For example, students might be asked to:

• Identify one strength of the work.
• Identify an area that could be clarified or strengthened.
• Apply specific criteria from the assignment rubric.
• Ask a question that could help the author develop the work further.
• Suggest one actionable next step.

A Canvas Rubric can provide additional structure by giving students the same criteria the instructor will use to evaluate the assignment.

Consider what students should do with the feedback they receive. Peer review becomes more meaningful when it is connected to another step in the learning process. Students might:

• Revise their work based on peer feedback.
• Identify feedback they plan to incorporate.
• Explain why they accepted or did not incorporate particular suggestions.
• Submit a brief reflection about what they learned from reviewing another student's work.

• Explain the purpose of peer review before students begin.
• Provide clear criteria for giving useful feedback.
• Consider modeling an example of effective and ineffective feedback.
• Use a rubric or guiding questions to provide structure.
• Allow enough time between the initial submission, peer review, and final submission.
• Start with lower-stakes peer review activities before using the process for major assignments.
• Make expectations clear about whether students are expected to revise their work based on feedback.

• Instructure Community: How do I use peer review assignments in a course?