Teaching Notes: Trying Peer Review

 So--I attempted my first peer reviews in my script analysis class today. I've taught the course for years, but this is the first time I've carved out time (by cutting out lots of assignments) for peer responses.

I'd love to claim I was acting in Best Pedagogical Interests, but really I instituted this as a response to losing TA support for the classes this semester. It's all me, facing a digital pile of 50 analyses that historically have taken 20 minutes per paper to do. I don't have that time or energy now, so I wanted to farm out some of the low-level responding to students.

Of course, I do want the process also to make students think more carefully about their writing and the plays themselves. 

How'd it go? Well, I haven't graded their response sheets yet, but I saw some good and some meh. 

The meh: lots of people didn't show up. There's always a deficit between enrollment in the class and those who turn in an analysis assignment. But today I saw also a deficit between those who turned in an assignment and those who showed up for the peer review.

The good: I successfully impressed on them the requirement to have brought in a printed-out copy of the assignment. I even got them to agree last Friday that anyone not having a printout copy could not participate in the peer review. Sure enough, everyone showed up with a printed out copy.

The meh: There was a good bit of blowing off. Lots of people finished so quickly that I gather they didn't do much actual reading and responding. This is apparently a common reaction in peer reviews: "great work!" and nothing else. One student asked if she could get some additional peer review, as her peer had not (by their own admission) read the play she had written about. 

The fix: I think I'm going to borrow a bit of ungrading tactics here and let people choose which grade level they want to do for the peer review. Perhaps I'll do something like the following:

0/25--You choose to skip the review process altogether

C (15/25)--You do a self-review based on a Q&A checklist I provide.

A (25/25)--You commit to reading all plays people have written about, and you commit to being in class to do a more in-depth response to their paper.

The fix, part II: I need to scaffold peer responding a bit more. I think a lot of the finish-quickly-say-it's-good factor has to do with the fact that people don't know how to respond. 

The fix, part III: perhaps I'll anonymize peer responding? It could be that some folk are just very nervous about responding to another person in person. It might be easier for them to respond to someone anonymously. I'm not exactly sure how to make that happen?

We'll see on Friday (with the revised analysis drafts) how yay or meh the process is at nipping in the bud some common pitfalls.