He applies cycles of peer feedback in his 4-week project for students. His advice addresses the process dimension of peer feedback, also useful if, as a teacher, you fear that your students are using too much ChatGPT (see our earlier tip on this). We start with part 1 of our essential do's and don'ts for effective peer feedback!
Tip 1: do not use peer feedback for summative assessment
When you use peer feedback for giving a (partial) grade (summative assessment), you run the risk of relegating the learning aspect to the background. All kinds of processes can arise in which students feel more stressed and try to game the system. Think of situations where students agree among themselves which grades they give to each other or decide never to give a fail.
Peer feedback is especially suitable for supporting the learning process (formative assessment). Therefore, it’s best suited to allow students to work more deeply with the material and to develop and experience different perspectives on the content.
Tip 2: do not use peer feedback for single solution assignments
Peer feedback does not lend itself well to assignments that allow only one answer. Use peer feedback only if the elaboration of assignments is relatively complex and elaborate, where several interpretations, answers or ways of answering are possible. Indeed, peer feedback is different from having students simply review assignments with only one possible answer. Rather, give direct instruction and ensure that students learn and practise together, by using active learning forms and checking (or having them check) with answer models.
Tip 3: discuss the importance of peer feedback and possible ‘friction’
If you deploy a peer feedback task without giving further explanation, students often don't know how and why to do it. They might see it as an unnecessary burden and even think that, as a teacher, you are just doing it to easily save time for yourself. Therefore, your role as a teacher is very important: explain why you use peer feedback and what it brings to students. After all, students learn from both receiving and giving feedback. An important step here is to include it in the learning objectives, for example: learning to give, receive and process feedback. After all, this is a skill that a scientist must master, but which students do not automatically acquire. By including it in the learning objectives, students know that with the assignment, they are going to practise giving feedback and that you will hold them accountable for it.
Tip 4: start with anonymous feedback
Students generally take some time to get used to giving peer feedback. If they have to give feedback directly to acquaintances, they may be less inclined to give an honest and balanced assessment. Therefore, start with an anonymous feedback round, giving them safe practice first. After this familiarisation round, you can more easily switch to non-anonymous feedback.
Tip 5: let your students work with the real assessment criteria
When students work on a final product (written, poster, presentation, collaboration) during the course, it is very important that they know how they will be assessed. To give the students a good idea of what is important, have them already focus on the criteria or rubric that also applies to their final product, during peer feedback. This cuts both ways as students learn to give peer feedback and also learn what criteria their final product must meet.
Tip 6: have students give interim peer feedback for each criterion of the rubric
As you can see it is important that students work with the final assessment criteria when giving peer feedback. But more is needed: make sure that students actually give feedback per criterion from the rubric as well. You can set up a system like FeedbackFruits Peer Review, so that students have to make a minimum number of comments per criterion. That way, you prevent students from only paying attention to language errors and ignoring the other criteria.