The impact of peer-review on undergraduate grades when students decide whether to participate

Abstract

Feedback is at the heart of debates over student satisfaction and academic workload, an issue likely to increase in importance as the tertiary sector responds to the funding crisis sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this light, the development of approaches to improve feedback is essential for teaching and learning, with many approaches involving some form of peer-review. Almost universally, peer-review is shown to be beneficial for participants, who recognize those benefits and appreciate the opportunity. Approaches to peer-review, though, presently involve extensive academic time and resources in the form of oversight, control, and analysis, suggesting a need to bridge resource-intensive development with the realities of implementation, workloads, and decreasing resources. In response, this paper reports on an effort to encourage student-led peer-review, asking: if left to decide whether to participate, what are the impacts of peer-review on student grades? Our mixed methods analysis confirms the benefits of peer-review and associated student satisfaction, while demonstrating that these benefits (can) occur without substantial workload for educators. The findings, though, are tempered by rates of participation and the differentiated capacities of students. The full approach is provided for readers to amend and apply if desired.

Partizipation in Lehr-Lern-Arrangements: Literaturreview und kritische Würdigung des Partizipationskonzepts

“…B. Rätsel, Arbeitsblatt) abstimmen können. Zum Dritten wird die Möglichkeit der individuellen Auswahlmöglichkeit aus verschiedenen Optionen genannt, was eine individuelle Entscheidung unabhängig von der Gruppe/Klasse impliziert und damit inhaltlich eng an der Selbstbestimmung zu verorten ist (Chan et al 2014;Cook et al 2021;Deed et al 2014;Handa 2020). Die Mitwirkung als dritte Teilstufe von Partizipation war mitunter aus den gegebenen Informationen in den gesichteten Beiträgen nur schwer von der Mitbestimmung abzugrenzen.…”

“…Selbstbestimmung wird in den betreffenden Beiträgen meist als eigenständige Wahl aus verschiedenen Alternativen bzw. freie individuelle Entscheidung thematisiert(Chan et al 2014;Cook et al 2021;Deed et al 2014;Helm 2014;Reeve et al 2004). Weiterhin finden sich in den Beiträgen Hinweise auf lernerseitige Selbstbestimmung vermittelt über die Unterrichtsgestaltung.Quenzel und Ott (2022) berichten in diesem Zusammenhang von der Umsetzung "offenen Unterrichts", welcher sowohl auf unterrichtsmethodischer (z.…”

Participation in the classroom as a basis for democracy education? A conceptual analysis of the concept of student participation

“…In other words, this is about the "how" of participatory teaching practice. The first is individual decisionmaking, in the form of either choosing from a variety of predetermined options or choosing freely, without predetermined options (e.g., Deed et al, 2014;Cook et al, 2021). Second, there is dialogic-discursive decision-making in learning groups or in the classroom (e.g., Richter and Tjosvold, 1980;Boatright and Allman, 2018;Daher and Saifi, 2018); third, there is democratic voting for or against different choice alternatives, the formation of a majority opinion, and a resulting majority decision (e.g., Bätz et al, 2009).…”