Q&A Week 2: Questions Answered

The Week 2 webpage contains information about incorporating peer review into a Canvas assignment. The Canvas Guides include information about how to set up peer review as well as how to monitor the workflow and see comments.  

Peer reviews require some preparation in order to be successful: 

• Use peer reviews for shorter drafts (5 pages or less, 5-10-minute video or audio clips). Shorter pieces of work are more manageable with different student schedules and encourage focus on specific, targeted criteria. 

• Provide reviewers with criteria or guiding questions to focus their observations and comments. Criteria can be expressed through rubrics, questions, or ‘look for’ evidence tables. 
• Use a ‘polish and praise’ approach. Encourage reviewers to share one positive element in the work and one element that would benefit from revision. 
• Model how to review peer work. Record yourself doing a ‘think aloud’ reviewing a piece of work and framing comments. Break students into small groups to review a common paper and practice feedback; afterwards, the whole class can debrief and share their processes. 
• Encourage reviewers to ask questions and share observations instead of suggestions about how to improve a paper. 
• Teach students how to use peer feedback. Hold a class session to discuss common feedback and what potential next steps might look like. 

• Consider having students respond to peer feedback using revision notes or appendices. 

Testing out ideas in Canvas before the semester starts is a great idea! An easy way is to create a small learning community of your UMW friends and colleagues (2-4 people) and add them to your course as students (and you go into their courses as a student). The learning community can rotate times/meetings to play with the sandbox features set up in each course. Having trouble getting a group together? Reach out to the Center for Teaching for assistance. 

Yes. Using this Canvas Guide, scroll down to ‘Manage Peer Reviews’ to see how to delete and reassign peer reviewers. 

Students will prioritize what we communicate is important. Feedback is best utilized on drafts, when work is still being designed and shaped. Once a student has submitted a ‘final’ assignment, the feedback may seem less useful unless we build in opportunities for students to reflect upon and act on assignment comments. Ideas include small group and individual debrief sessions, reflective writing exercises, or assignment planning activities that ask students to share how feedback on a prior class assignment will inform their work now. 

On their own, no. The feedback is limited to the modality in which it was delivered. To avoid accessibility challenges with feedback, survey your students about how they would like to receive feedback so that you do not offer inaccessible comments. Be aware that group feedback will often need to be made accessible to meet more student needs or if it was shared via a meeting or synchronous session where any group member was not in attendance. 

There is no stated limit, but one Canvas Community user did share that when they tried to cut and paste 150 paragraphs into the box an error message was received.