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Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing in
Business Courses
Lloyd J. Rieber
To cite this article: Lloyd J. Rieber (2006) Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing in Business Courses, Journal of Education for Business, 81:6, 322-326, DOI: 10.3200/ JOEB.81.6.322-326
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JOEB.81.6.322-326
Published online: 07 Aug 2010.
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322 Journal of Education for Business ABSTRACT. Student peer review has
proven an effective technique for improving student writing in both English and busi-ness communication classes, yet the tech-nique is not widely used in business cours-es other than busincours-ess communication. In this article, the author discusses using stu-dent peer review in business classes to improve students’ final written submissions. In doing so, the author discusses the defini-tion of peer review, the benefits of peer review, the reasons peer review helps improve student writing, the common peer review methods, the ways to incorporate peer review into business courses, and the disadvantages of peer review. Samples of different types of peer review are also included.
Copyright © 2006 Heldref Publications
Using Peer Review to Improve
Student Writing in Business Courses
LLOYD J. RIEBER
SAINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA CANADA
eer review is used extensively to improve students’ writing in busi-ness communication classes (Lynch, 1992) and in English classes on both the secondary and post-secondary levels (Topping, 2003). However, a review of the literature reveals few instances when peer review is used in business courses other than business communication, yet business teachers frequently complain about the poor quality of students’ writ-ten work. It seems reasonable, there-fore, that business teachers consider using peer review to improve their stu-dents’ written submissions.
What Is Peer Review?
The terms peer review, peer editing, peer assessment, and peer evaluationare often used interchangeably. In most instances, the terms peer assessmentand peer evaluation are used to mean peer grading, a process in which students individually, or in groups, evaluate and assign grades to other students’ work. These grades can be assigned as a sum-mative or a forsum-mative evaluation. Often when peer grading is used as summative evaluation, the process is used to increase the amount of writing students do, espe-cially in large classes where teachers are hesitant to assign writing assignments because of the grading load. Many teach-ers use peer grading as part or all of the summative evaluation for some student writing. This may seem like a lazy
solu-tion to assigning more writing in large classes, but researchers have demonstrat-ed little difference between the grades peers assign and grades assigned by pro-fessors (Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000; Marcoulides & Simkin, 1991, 1995; Margin, 2001; Pain & Mowl, 1996; Ste-fani, 1994).
The terms peer editing and peer revieware most often used to refer to a formative evaluation done by peers. In this process, popularized by the process writing movement, students submit their writing to peers who review (or edit) it but do not assign grades. Often the review process involves several iter-ations before the teacher receives a final draft for evaluation and grading. This definition—students commenting on other students’ papers as part of a for-mative evaluation process—will be used throughout this article. Although peer grading also shows signs of improving student writing, it will not be discussed.
Benefits of Peer Review
University professors are familiar with the concept of peer review. All research in refereed journals is peer reviewed. The notion is that if researchers submit their work to peers, and the peers are experts in the field, their review will help the authors produce better research. It seems a stretch, though, to assume that students, who are not experts in their fields, can help other nonexperts by reviewing their
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written work. It probably is a stretch if instructors ask students to correct each other’s work, but if students are expected only to review each other’s work and point out areas they perceive as weak or ways in which they think the assignment does not conform to guidelines, they can and do make comments that can help peers improve their writing.
I compared the average grades each student (n= 57) in my business commu-nications class achieved on the writing assignments they did not have peer reviewed (M = 66.0%, SD = 14.3%, where M is mean and SD is standard deviation) to the average of the grades they achieved on the writing assignments they did have peer reviewed (M = 73.4%, SD= 14.8%). The results showed that on assignments that students had peer reviewed, they did significantly better than on those they did not have peer reviewed,t(56) = 2.95, p < .005. I have repeated this comparison several times, each time reaffirming that peer review works: Students achieve higher grades on papers they have peer reviewed than on papers they do not have peer reviewed. This result is not surprising. Positive results from peer review, assessment, or evaluation have been reported by Bouton and Tutty (1975) for regular high school students, by Karegianes, Pascarella, and Pflaum (1980) for low-achieving high school students, and by Weeks and White (1982) and by MacArthur, Schwartz, and Graham (1991) for students with learning disabilities. On the basis of these and many other studies cited by Topping (2003) in his review of peer assessment research in secondary and postsecondary classes, it is safe to say that, when done correctly, peer review can help students on any educational level improve their written work.
Reasons Peer Review Works
Although it is difficult to say exactly why peer review works, four possible reasons present themselves.
Students Complete Assignments Ahead of the Due Date
As anyone who writes knows, good writing requires revision and editing. Students often submit poorly written papers because they put off writing
them until the last minute and do not have the time needed to revise and edit. However, to engage in a peer review students must complete their work at least one class before the assignment due date. Therefore, they have the opportunity to revise, edit, and improve their work before they turn it in.
Students Review the Assignment Directions a Second Time
During peer review, students review other students’ papers to see if they fol-low the assignment directions and meet the assignment criteria. This process gives students a second chance to look at the assignment guidelines themselves. Because they are assessing whether another student followed these guide-lines, students are especially careful to make sure they understand the guide-lines. This understanding helps students revise their own assignments after the peer review. In fact, it is quite possible that students learn more from reviewing another student’s paper than they do from having their own paper reviewed.
Students Submit Better Writing if They Know Peers Will Read Their Work
In my course, when I collect drafts, comment on them myself, and return them to students for revision, many stu-dents turn in very rough initial drafts, which need complete revision. However, because students do not want to appear unintelligent to their peers, when they know their work will be read and com-mented on by another student during a peer review, they are careful to produce a more polished draft for review.
Students React Better to Peer Comments Than They Do to Teacher Comments
The student–teacher relationship is dif-ferent from the relationship students have with their peers. More often than not, teachers comment about what students have done “wrong” or what is “incorrect” about their papers. As a result, students tend to see their teachers’ comments as evaluative and take them personally. Any discussion with the teacher revolves around how to make “right” what has been identified as “wrong.”
Peers, however, tend to comment about what they do not understand or ways in which they think a paper does not meet the assignment guidelines. The student being reviewed can take some consolation from the fact that the student reviewer’s comments may be inaccurate and is, therefore, more willing to discuss peer comments than teacher comments. These discussions cause both the student being reviewed and the reviewer to rethink the assignment, which leads to improvement in both their papers.
Approaches to Peer Review
The process of peer review requires students to look at other students’ papers and critique them following some instructions given by the teacher. Depending on the teacher’s instructions, the peer-review can be openended, guided, or directed. I will use three sam-ples of peer review instructions for a resume and cover letter assignment to illustrate these three approaches.
Open-Ended Peer Review
In an open-ended peer review (see Appendix A), the students are considered experts and offered little or no guidance in how to review their peers’ papers. The teacher essentially says, “You know what this assignment requires, check your peer’s assignment to make sure it meets the requirements.” This approach to peer review is typically used in advanced classes in which students have the knowledge, ability, and confidence to conduct a peer review unaided.
Guided Peer Review
Often the teacher guides peer review-ers’ efforts with a list of general ques-tions to consider as they review their peers’ papers (see Appendix B). These questions typically summarize the assignment directions and also ask the reviewer to consider specific aspects of the peer’s writing.
Directed Peer Review
In a directed peer review, the teacher gives reviewers a checklist that covers all aspects of the assignment guidelines (Appendix C). This approach is best
324 Journal of Education for Business used with students who have limited experience in the subject and lack strong writing skills. The checklist approach has several advantages: (a) it ensures that all papers are reviewed using the same criteria, (b) it helps weak students or students not knowledgeable in the area covered by the paper read a peer’s paper and determine if it meets the criteria; and (c) it ensures a thorough review. Finally, the checklist approach leaves both the reviewer and the author with a checklist they can take away from class and use to review their own papers before they turn them in.
Ways to Incorporate Peer Review Into the Business Classroom
Peer review can be done by individu-als or groups who can provide oral or written feedback to the author, and the peer reviewer’s efforts can be evaluated by the professor or kept entirely between the reviewer and the author. Before deciding which technique to use, teachers must first decide what they expect their students to accomplish with the peer review and how much time they want to devote to it. As mentioned earli-er, it is probably unreasonable to expect peers, except those in advanced classes, to correct problems in each other’s work. It is reasonable, in an open-ended or guided peer review, to expect peers to comment about how well the assign-ment reflects the assignassign-ment guidelines, how easy it is to read and understand, and whether it accomplishes its pur-pose. In a directed peer review using a checklist, teachers can expect students to provide detailed information about areas where the assignment does and does not meet assignment guidelines.
Individual Peer Review
The easiest peer review to organize is one in which students individually review each other’s papers. For individ-ual peer reviews, the teacher either has each student swap papers with another student or collects all the papers and distributes them to reviewers. Allowing students to exchange their papers with whomever they choose has two disad-vantages: (a) students tend to swap papers with their friends, who may not
be as critical as they could be and (b) some students will end up swapping with students weaker than themselves and, therefore, may not benefit from the review process. The main advantage of having students select their own review-ers is that they know whose paper they are reviewing and who is reviewing their paper so getting together at the end of the class to discuss their papers with their reviewers takes little time.
Teacher distribution has the advantage that the teacher can distribute papers so that the reviewer and the author are not sitting next to each other. The teacher can give each student’s paper to another stu-dent elsewhere in the classroom. Because the reviewer and author are not sitting next to each other (and are probably not close friends), reviewers tend to be more thorough. Also, the review process is not hampered by the socializing in which friends tend to engage. However, teacher distribution has the disadvantage that it takes more time than student swapping. The teacher not only has to collect and distribute the students’ papers but also make provision for returning the papers to the authors and getting authors and reviewers together to discuss reviewers’ comments. Unless the teacher makes sure that authors and reviewers are paired when distributing the papers, teacher dis-tribution can create pandemonium in large classes when authors and reviewers attempt to find each other to discuss each other’s comments.
Group Peer Review
In group peer review, students work in groups, typically of four or five. A group of five, for example, is given five papers from students outside the group. Each individual in the group reviews each paper the group receives. The group dis-cusses each paper and gives the author comments that summarize all their think-ing. Group peer review has the advantage that authors benefit from more than one other student’s review. The primary dis-advantage is that group peer review takes more time than individual peer review.
Oral or Written Feedback
Feedback to the author can be oral, written, or both. In a directed peer
review, students check off guidelines the paper meets, make brief comments about guidelines the paper does not meet, and then discuss their comments with the author. Open-ended and guid-ed peer reviews generally rely on writ-ten communication between reviewer and author. Oral communication has the advantage of being immediate and quick. Written feedback, however, tends to be more thorough than oral feedback, leaves the author with a doc-ument to refer to during revision, gives all students additional writing experi-ence, and can be checked by the teacher to make sure reviewers are doing a thorough job.
Graded or Ungraded Peer Reviews
English teachers using the process approach often evaluate and grade both the authors’ paper and the reviewers’ comments. They assess both the quality and usefulness of the reviewers’ com-ments and how well the authors incor-porated the reviewers’ comments into their revisions. This approach is useful in small classes, but it essentially dou-bles the grading for every assignment and, therefore, does not work well in large classes. However, students do want some credit for their efforts as reviewers. One option is to award stu-dents class participation credits for completing a peer review.
Disadvantages of Peer Review
Peer review is a powerful tool for improving students’ writing, but it is not without its disadvantages.
Peer Review Takes Class Time
Usually, instructors set aside an entire class period for the peer review of each assignment. However, if class time is a premium, teachers can assign the peer review to be completed outside of class and use class time only for reviewers to discuss their findings with authors. Group peer reviews almost always fol-low this process because a single class period is not normally enough time for a group of four or five students to critical-ly evaluate and comment on four or five other students’ papers.
Weak Writers May Not Be Able to Help Strong Writers
Although it may be true that weak writers have little advice to benefit strong writers, the help students receive from a peer reviewer may not be the most valuable aspect of a peer review. The very act of critically assessing someone else’s assignment can cause students to assess their own assignments more critically. In other words, students can learn more from their review of another student’s paper than they learn from a peer’s review of theirs.
Students Can Assume a Peer’s Review Caught All Weaknesses
Sometimes students excuse their own lack of editing or revision by pointing out that their peers did not point out all the weaknesses in their papers. However, stu-dents should understand that peer reviews are only part of the revision process and that they as authors are ultimately respon-sible for their final submissions.
Conclusion
Experience at all educational levels has shown that peer review is effective in
improving students’ final drafts. Although the peer review process takes time and involves organization and plan-ning, it proves its worth at grading time. Without a doubt, better written papers take less time to read and are more enjoy-able to grade than poorly written papers. In addition, the peer review process intro-duces students to the notion of submitting their work to peers for review, a common practice in the workplace. For teachers of any business subject that requires written submissions, peer review is worth a try.
NOTE
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Lloyd J. Rieber, Marketing Department, Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3C3, Canada.
E-mail: lloyd.rieber@smu.ca
REFERENCES
Bouton, K., & Tutty, G. (1975). The effect of peer-evaluated student compositions on writing improvement. The English Record,3,64–69. Falchikov, N., & Goldfinch, J. (2000). Student
peer assessment in higher education: A meta-analysis comparing peer and teacher marks.
Review of Educational Research, 70, 287–322. Karegianes, M. L., Pascarella, E. T., & Pflaum, S. W. (1980). The effects of peer editing on the writing proficiency of low-achieving tenth
grade students. Journal of Educational Research, 73, 203–207.
Lynch, D. H. (1992). Peer evaluation of writing in business communication classes. Journal of Education for Business, 68, 44–48.
MacArthur, C. A., Schwartz, S. S., & Graham, S. (1991). Effects of a reciprocal peer revision strategy in special education classrooms.
Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 6, 201–210.
Marcoulides, G. A., & Simkin, M. G. (1991). Evaluating student papers: The case for peer review. Journal of Education for Business, 67, 80–86.
Marcoulides, G. A., & Simkin, M. G. (1995). The consistency of peer review in student writing projects. Journal of Education for Business, 70, 220–224.
Margin, D. (2001). Reciprocity as a source of bias in multiple peer assessment of group work.
Studies in Higher Education, 26(1), 53–64. Pain, R., & Mowl, G. (1996). Improving
geogra-phy essay writing using innovative assessment.
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(1), 19–32.
Stefani, L. A. J. (1994). Peer, self and tutor assess-ment: Relative reliabilities. Studies in Higher Education, 19(1), 69–75.
Topping, K. J. (2003). Self and peer assessment in school and university: Reliability, validity and utility. In M. S. R. Segers, F. J. R. C. Dochy, & E. C. Cascallar (Eds.) ,Optimizing new modes of assessment: In search of qualities and stan-dards. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Weeks, J. O., & White, M. B. (1982, March 7–9).
Peer editing versus teacher editing: Does it make a difference?Paper presented at Meeting of the North Carolina Council of the Interna-tional Reading Association, Charlotte, NC.
APPENDIX A
An Open-Ended Peer Review for a Résumé and Cover Letter Assignment
After reviewing the résumé and cover letter do you think the author • is using an effective resume and cover letter format?
• understands what the job requires and has demonstrated how he or she meets those requirements?
• sounds enthusiastic about performing the job?
What changes would you recommend to the author’s résumé or cover letter? If you were an employer, would you interview this applicant? Why or why not?
APPENDIX B
A Guided Peer Review for a Résumé and Cover Letter Assignment
Cover Letter
In what ways could the author improve the document’s format?
What makes the author’s discussion of job-related assets and evidence convincing? How does the author show knowledge about the job applied for and the company? How does the author ask for an interview and provide a time frame for the interview? How is the tone of the cover letter appropriate or inappropriate for the audience? Suggest corrections that would improve any aspect of the author’s cover letter.
Résumé
Does the author follow an appropriate résumé format?
How does the résumé highlight skills and experience relevant to the job?
What does the author do to make the most important qualifications for the job stand out? Other than the author’s work and school experience, what additional information about
the author does the résumé give?
326 Journal of Education for Business
APPENDIX C
A Directed Peer Review With Specific Questions
Cover Letter
Format
Does the cover letter follow the personal business letter format? • Return address
• Date
• Inside address
• Dear name or subject or attention line • Full block format in 12-point type • Signature block and signature • Enclosure notation
First Paragraph
Does the author
• tell the reader he or she is applying for a job and give the job title? • mention his or her major qualification(s) or central selling feature? • refer to the advertisement if job is advertised?
Body of letter
Does the author
• show how his or her specific qualifications are relevant for the job? • discuss only qualifications that are relevant to the job?
• give specific evidence of the qualifications or qualities he or she claims to have by explaining how she or he gained the qualifications or qualities?
• demonstrate knowledge of the company?
• tell the reader why he or she is applying for this job with this company? • refer to an enclosed résumé?
Last Paragraph
Does the author
• restate his or her interest in the job?
• ask for an interview or say he or she will call to arrange an interview?
