Business education and the development of feedback skills: The impact of student peer review assignments

Abstract

Business education not only strives to bridge the gap between related theories and applications but also seeks to develop student’s employability skills. Employability skills are generic skill sets of employees and potential employees that employers across industries value. Leadership, communications, and relationship building are examples of skills that employers have reported as valuable employability skills. Feedback receiving and giving are communications skills important for employment and professional development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogical device of peer reviews in business classes to develop students’ feedback receiving and feedback giving skills. Using the theoretical learning theory, connectivisim, we propose that course-related peer-review assignments due to their collaborative nature improve feedback skills. From the literature, we developed a conceptual model related to collaborative coursework such as peer review assignments in business courses. We also present some best practices for leveraging course-specific peer-review assignments to enhance students’ feedback skills.