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 continue with part 2 of our essential do's and don'ts for effective peer feedback!
Want to read part 1 first? Check out the tip here.
Tip 7: convert peer feedback criteria into questions
In tip 5 and 6 of part one, we discussed that it's best to let students work with the real assessment criteria and rubric, of the course. Apart from that it's also a good idea to transform the rubric criteria of your assessment into concrete questions. This way, the focus during peer feedback is on the improvement process and students provide feedback in a meaningful way, rather than just a basic assessment. When presented in the form of questions, students often understand better how to assess a product, and this stimulates them more to think deeply. For example:
Original rubric text:
"Context, concepts and reasoning are mostly well explained and substantiated (including references). A mostly clear and critical overview of the literature review and key aspects is given."
Modified text (by question form):
"How well are the project's context, concepts and reasoning explained and substantiated (including references)? Does the project present a clear and critical overview of the literature review and key aspects? What went well and what can be improved?"
Tip 8: let your students give tips and tops per criterion
For your students to give sufficient and effective peer feedback, make sure they name both tips and tops per line of the rubric:
- Tips are specific and actionable suggestions or constructive criticism aimed at helping the recipient improve their skills, performance, or work.
- Tops are compliments or positive feedback, words of encouragement or recognition for the strengths, achievements, or successful aspects of the recipient's work
Make sure the students give at least two or three tips and tops per line. You can set up FeedbackFruits to automatically require this from the students.
Tip 9: students learn most from dialogue about feedback
Remember that students learn most from reflecting on feedback. Therefore, do not skip this step. Build in a reflection step by having students summarise the most important feedback and how they will process it. Try to have them discuss the feedback (face to face) with each other and create a safe environment for students to do so.
Tip 10: schedule a new practice moment after the peer feedback
Peer feedback is only effective if students actually start working on improving their intermediate product or skills, soon after receiving the feedback. So, make sure that the next step after peer feedback, is the submission of a new product or a new opportunity to practise a skill.
Tip 11: no need to grade intermediate products
You don't need to meticulously grade all students' intermediate products during the process; a simple pass or fail is sufficient for this. Extensive feedback from you as a teacher, or giving detailed grades, is not necessary for the intermediate product. During the process, your role is mainly to encourage and guide the students. After they go through every step, you give a more specific final assessment for the definitive product.
Tip 12: work efficiently with additional tools
As an additional tip, Danny shares that FeedbackFruits has an option to set minimum requirements for size and other properties of the assignment for final products. And, once students have given feedback, FeedbackFruits now also has an AI system that gives a quality label with Automated Feedback. Finally, FeedbackFruits has very clear teacher dashboards where you can see if students are meeting all the components.