Today's meetings of my Calc I class are devoted to giving the students a chance to conference with the folks who over the past weekend performed a peer review of their work on the first class project, The Clock Problem (an optimization problem involving an idealized cost function).
These student meetings this morning, by and large, were brief, but they seemed amicable. I emphasized, as always, the need to be respectful and helpful in providing feedback to one another (it's as pointless to say "good work!" as it is to say "this sucks!"), and I hope that emphasis paid off. We'll see how it goes in the second section, which meets in under an hour.
I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on peer review: students, if you're in my class, drop me a line in the comments section and let me know how you think this particular peer review activity has gone (has it helped? Would you have structured it in a different way?). Other folks: if you have any insights on peer review in mathematical fields, please let me know. I've done a bit of it in various courses, but am always looking for new ideas.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Peer review review
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3 comments:
Maybe you already do this, but my personal "must-have" as part of any in-class peer review project is this: 3 things that were done right and should not be changed, and 3 things that need improvement. We do examples first to demonstrate the need for specificity. Have fun!
MY group got some very helpful feedback on our paper, and I hope we gave good feedback. The peer review guidelines helped, but I felt like it could have been simpler, or more direct. Not sure specifically how. Maybe a rubric, or more simplified checklist. I like Meredith's suggestion as well: having the whole class see a few examples.
One issue with this kind of activity is if you have a group that really doesn't care, they can slime others with their apathy. Oh well....
The only thing I would suggest for next time you do a peer review activity, is to have a pair of students switch papers with each other. This makes the meetings in class with people run smoother if you only have to meet with one other person. Also it helps the activity come full circle, meaning you read their paper so you kinda get the sense of how much you trust their feedback on yours because you saw what effort they put into their own paper. All in all I'm a fan or peer review though!
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