Peer review in a product development course - implementation and reception

Paper in proceeding, 2022

The use of peer review as a teaching and learning activity has gained lot of ground during the last decade. Effective peer response is characterized by students’ engagement and gives students the chance to practice both their ability to review by reading and commenting on other students’ work and to receive and address feedback from others. There is also a driver that using peer reviews can separate formative and summative feedback and make the feedback loop quicker. In this paper we describe the introduction and implementation of a particular peer review intervention involving peer review from many students in a project-based product development course taught in the second year at a five-year mechanical engineering programme at Chalmers University of Technology. To find out how the students’ perceived the peer review activity, a student survey and in-depth interviews with students as well as interviews with supervisors were performed. Overall, the response from the students is positive and more so when a year passed compared to the ones who just completed the course. The few negative aspects are things to improve rather than discarding the method. The supervisors’ response is likewise positive and highlights the additional skills developed by the students, such as critical thinking, resulting in a more effective learning environment. The conclusion is that the peer review in this course benefits students as well as the supervisors. It gives quicker response form more participants. The grades in the course, which are based on a combination of a grade from the group project work and an individual grade based on their peer review, became fairer after implementing peer review.