This paper provides an insightful look at how online student peer reviews can help students learn from their peers, as well as how an instructor can focus more on teaching and less on “judging.”
The paper summarizes observations from using this peer review system in different contexts, including: commenting on weekly assignments (computer science and mathematics courses), assessment of team projects (marketing class), and a psychology class that answered questions online (rather than having students post their own Web pages). Since posting assignments on Web pages requires a reasonable knowledge of Web servers, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and file transfer protocol (FTP), these other formats proved more useful for non-computer science students.
Wolfe discusses some of the problems associated with this process (such as harsh language, potential for cheating, and late assignments), as well as the advantages of using such a system. He also furnishes data from a software engineering course he taught that demonstrates the efficacy of this approach. While the general description of the project, and the specific data on this course, are quite useful, it is unfortunate that the author did not point out the problems he encountered in building such a system, or note whether it was available for use by other colleagues. Wolfe includes several useful references, and anyone interested in investigating the use of online student peer reviews would be well served by reading this paper.