Student Peer Feedback: Why and How?

Event Date & Time

Event Description

Student peer feedback is a reciprocal process whereby students provide feedback on the work of peers and receive feedback from peers on their own work. It has several benefits which include providing learners with a greater variety and quantity of feedback, offering feedback that may be easier to understand than that offered by instructors, and sensitizing students to different readers’ perspectives (Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2013).  In addition, student peer feedback may be a useful assessment strategy for instructors who wish to incorporate more learner-centered teaching practices while having to balance larger class sizes and increasing demands on their time.  Research has shown that the process of student peer feedback can have a positive effect on learning (Hamer, Purchase, Luxton-Reilly & Denny, 2014).

This session will begin with a brief overview of the learning benefits of student peer feedback practices in post-secondary teaching and learning. Next, an example of the use of peer feedback in Sociology will be described showing why the choice to integrate peer feedback was made and how it was integrated into course design. Data describing student perspectives on the use of peer feedback will be discussed.  Participants will then explore the potential for use of peer feedback in their own courses – exploring why and how to use it and how to determine if it was effective.

By the end of the session, participants should be able to:

• List several benefits of using student peer feedback from the perspective of learners and instructors.
• Briefly describe some of the potential pitfalls of using peer feedback and how to avoid them.
• Decide on next steps for incorporating student peer feedback in their own teaching.

Silvia Bartolic, Department of Sociology 

References 

Hamer, J., Purchase, H., Luxton-Reilly, A., & Denny, P. (2015). A comparison of peer and tutor feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,40(1),151-164.

Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102-122.