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Learning and Teaching
Integrating peer feedback into your course for better student engagement
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Looking for new ways to engage your students in their learning? According to Sustainable Energy Engineering lecturer Vivian Neal, integrating a peer feedback process into your course can help them connect with course content and foster skills in critical thinking.
In Neal’s course, SEE 101W, students are required to provide and receive several rounds of feedback on their final paper. Neal prepares them for this work by equipping them with frameworks on how to give feedback and what to give it on.
“First-year students can be very hesitant to be critical of each other’s work and so to help them develop this skill, I teach them an approach to giving feedback called ACE, which stands for analytical, constructive and empowering. I scaffold the process by giving them opportunities to practice applying this framework with lower stakes assignments before we look at the major paper. In addition, they have to apply the grading rubric and the assignment instructions so they understand what's expected.”
Learning how to give feedback takes time
Feedback is a complex skill, notes Neal, and so despite her preparation she knows that not everyone will be immediately successful.
“There are a lot of skills involved, it requires learning how to provide feedback, receive feedback and integrate feedback. So even with all of the pieces I have put in place, the quality of feedback varies—about half of my class benefits from their peers’ comments. It’s a lot to cover in one term but we need to start somewhere.”
Enriching student learning
Neal explains that one of the immediate benefits she sees is connected more to the process of giving rather than receiving feedback.
“The interesting thing is that students are working with the rubric and assignment instructions and applying them to each other’s work in this much deeper way than they would otherwise. It’s this internalizing of the rubric that really enhances their own work. It invites the students to dive in to better understand what is going on in their own learning.”
Neal adds that she does not assess the quality of the feedback but does levy a mark penalty against students on their final paper if they did not provide a reasonable amount of quality feedback to their peers.
A better marking experience
In addition to the benefits for students, Neal notes that building peer feedback into her course helps make her marking workload more manageable.
“Marking papers can be a lot of work, but what I see as a result of students engaging in the peer feedback process is that the overall quality gets a lot higher—which makes for a more streamlined marking process for me. As well, when I’m looking at their papers, I’m looking specifically at how they integrated the feedback they received from their peers and TAs, which helps me really focus the type of feedback I provide.”
Though there are many elements to consider, Neal says the benefits for students are worth it.
“When we look at the types of skills that students get excited about and what will help them navigate learning in the world of generative AI, being able to apply a set of criteria to critically examine a piece of work is crucial. This is the type of learning that will set students up to thrive in the long-term.”