Guiding Students Towards Disciplinary Knowledge With Structured Peer Review Assignments

Abstract

Effective assignments facilitate the connections between course content and disciplinary conventions. We argue that implementation of structured writing and peer review activities can facilitate the connection making process for the students. This paper provides evidence of the positive impact structured writing and peer review activities have on student performance in an Advanced Research Methods Course in Psychology. Results suggest that student participation in structured writing and peer review activities result in higher final paper scores. Further work is needed to explore the mechanism by which structured peer review assignments foster student success in a course and disciplinary community.