The impact of peer-review on undergraduate grades when students decide whether to participate

Abstract

ABSTRACT Feedback is at the heart of debates over student satisfaction and academic workload, an issue likely to increase in importance as the tertiary sector responds to the funding crisis sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this light, the development of approaches to improve feedback is essential for teaching and learning, with many approaches involving some form of peer-review. Almost universally, peer-review is shown to be beneficial for participants, who recognize those benefits and appreciate the opportunity. Approaches to peer-review, though, presently involve extensive academic time and resources in the form of oversight, control, and analysis, suggesting a need to bridge resource-intensive development with the realities of implementation, workloads, and decreasing resources. In response, this paper reports on an effort to encourage student-led peer-review, asking: if left to decide whether to participate, what are the impacts of peer-review on student grades? Our mixed methods analysis confirms the benefits of peer-review and associated student satisfaction, while demonstrating that these benefits (can) occur without substantial workload for educators. The findings, though, are tempered by rates of participation and the differentiated capacities of students. The full approach is provided for readers to amend and apply if desired.