Here's some info about an initiative I learned about the last November's Sloan-C conference which others might find of interest. Dr. Edward Gehringer and his colleagues at North Carolina State University are using a custom-designed software tool called Expertiza to engage students in active learning through electronic peer review (=students reviewing other students’ work via the Web.) Expertiza enables students to use the peer review for a variety of purposes, including peer review of student material. Here is a link to a list of papers and slide presentations about their work:
http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/efg/expertiza/papers/
John
Esperanza
Looks like an interesting program for conducting peer reviews. I like the anonymity.
How does the instructor motivate students to participate? Depending on the class (first year students vs. graduate), I've tried peer review formats and the responses from the first year students were very tepid. Even though they were assessed in part based on their contributions to peer reviews, they tended not to do the work on time and not give their peers sufficient time to review their work.
Motivating Students to Participate in Peer Review
Hi idaj,
The slide shows and papers in my message may hold answers to your questions. My impression is that their peer review system is a fairly elaborate one. One of the presentations says that students rely more on their peers and less on the course staff for help. It may be that their system is fully integrated into the coursework (rather than being an add-on) that students can't avoid doing it, but I'm just speculating here.
I've also passed your question on directly to Dr. Gehringer at NCSU to see if he is available to answer your question.
John