Inspired by Nikki - My Experiences with Virtual Peer Review

Up until last semester (when I tutored in the Writing Center), my experience with virtual peer review was rather limited. As an instructor, I always had a few students that were absent on an in-class peer review day and (eventually) they would send me an electronic copy of their draft. It then became my job to give them some sort of critique (it never occurred to me to have the absent student to exchange papers with each other), and I would use the comment function in Microsoft Word to provide feedback, resave the document under a new name, and then e-mail it back to the student(s). I will admit that this method of providing constructive criticism seemed ideal because I didn’t necessarily have to wait until the next class period to “hand back” my comments, but it never really occurred to me to have students to either a). bring in electronic copies of their papers on a flash drive, through e-mail, etc. and have the in-class peer review take place in a virtual environment, or b). have the students exchange papers electronically and conduct peer reviews outside of class. Honestly, I am surprised that I never tried this in my classes at BSU, particularly because every semester I have taught in either a laptop or a desktop computer classroom, but also because my teaching mentor at SCSU actually had students do option A (he was actually the one that pointed out the comment function in Word to me). Interestingly enough, my wife has taken psychology classes with anywhere from 50 – 100 students enrolled and (whenever their big paper is due) the instructor places students in virtual peer review groups (option B). I’m curious what other disciplines might do (aside from just send their students to the writing center). ;-)