Peer review
Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility.
[8] A prototype professional peer review process was recommended in the Ethics of the Physician written by Ishāq ibn ʻAlī al-Ruhāwī (854–931).
[15] Peer review is used in education to achieve certain learning objectives, particularly as a tool to reach higher order processes in the affective and cognitive domains as defined by Bloom's taxonomy.
This may take a variety of forms, including closely mimicking the scholarly peer review processes used in science and medicine.
The meeting is preceded by the compilation of an expert report on which participating "peer countries" submit comments.
In 1997, the Governor of California signed into law Senate Bill 1320 (Sher), Chapter 295, statutes of 1997, which mandates that, before any CalEPA Board, Department, or Office adopts a final version of a rule-making, the scientific findings, conclusions, and assumptions on which the proposed rule are based must be submitted for independent external scientific peer review.
This collaborative learning tool involves groups of students reviewing each other's work and providing feedback and suggestions for revision.
[33] Rather than a means of critiquing each other's work, peer review is often framed as a way to build connection between students and help develop writers' identity.
[34] While widely used in English and composition classrooms, peer review has gained popularity in other disciplines that require writing as part of the curriculum including the social and natural sciences.
It also gives students professional experience that they might draw on later when asked to review the work of a colleague prior to publication.
It constitutes a fundamental process in academic and professional writing, serving as a systematic means to ensure the quality, effectiveness, and credibility of scholarly work.
“That’s boring.” This is also particularly evident in university classrooms, where the most common source of writing feedback during student years often comes from teachers, whose comments are often highly valued.
Students may become influenced to provide research in line with the professor’s viewpoints, because of the teacher’s position of high authority.
Benjamin Keating, in his article "A Good Development Thing: A Longitudinal Analysis of Peer Review and Authority in Undergraduate Writing," conducted a longitudinal study comparing two groups of students (one majoring in writing and one not) to explore students' perceptions of authority.
[47] Elizabeth Ellis Miller, Cameron Mozafari, Justin Lohr and Jessica Enoch state, "While peer review is an integral part of writing classrooms, students often struggle to effectively engage in it."
[48] Pamela Bedore and Brian O’Sullivan also hold a skeptical view of peer review in most writing contexts.
Feedback from the majority of non-professional writers during peer review sessions often tends to be superficial, such as simple grammar corrections and questions.
In contrast, the effectiveness of peer review is often limited due to the lack of structured feedback, characterized by scattered, meaningless summaries and evaluations that fail to meet the author's expectations for revising their work.
[50] Stephanie Conner and Jennifer Gray highlight the value of most students' feedback during peer review.
Mimi Li discusses the effectiveness and feedback of an online peer review software used in their freshman writing class.
For instance, it lists numerous questions peer reviewers can ask and allows various comments to be added to the selected text.
Based on observations over a semester, students showed varying degrees of improvement in their writing skills and grades after using the online peer review software.
