Are my students just bored?

What to expect:

4 min read

We’re about to dive into how peer review can create a positive impact on student engagement. Here’s how:

• Tech Talk: Peer review was the answer all along

• Surplus Scoop: Moral blackmail - yup, it’s officially a teaching thing

• Brainy Bits: Wait, students actually like peer review?

Tech Talk

Positive peer pressure might be the answer

Most classrooms around the world are set up in a similar way - a teacher, their supports, and students. Students complete work, and their teachers are the gatekeepers of their grades. This dichotomy is not necessarily a bad thing for all learners. However, this power imbalance can lead to disengagement. 

While teachers may hold the grading power, their peers hold a social power. This week’s tool attempts to re-engage our students using this exact angle, via peer review. Floop is a peer feedback app that integrates with your current learning management system, such as Google Classroom, and can be set up for each lesson within seconds. 

Floop makes peer review accessible for younger and older grades alike. It takes away the emotional messiness of reviewing our peers, by providing a safe, prompted, and anonymous environment to conduct it in. Through Floop, teachers can create scaffolded peer review items that students then complete. For example, let’s say that students are working on a math worksheet. They would submit it on Google Classroom as usual. However, instead of just a teacher providing feedback, Floop sends an anonymous version of their work to one of their peers. That peer reviewer then receives prompted questions and answers, chosen/written by you, for them to complete. As for student safety, teachers have complete control and can monitor every action taken by every student. In other words, it's anonymous for their peers, but not for you.

Why would this help with classroom management? Students are now not just facing their teacher, but are positively pressured to try for their peers. It’s a mix of educational and social construct theories (explored a bit below) that essentially encourages them not to try harder, but to try different. On top of this, peer review is an essential skill that aids in the development of critical thinking.

Price wise we’re actually talking about one of the best deals we’ve seen so far since starting The PEN Weekly. The free version is actually useful and will be what most teachers need (unlimited students, unlimited feedback, etc.). Should you need more features, such as exported data sheets, $120 USD/year is what you’re looking at. 

No matter the grade level, peer feedback is something we can all get behind. With apps like Floop, it’s now easier than ever. Do you use peer feedback in your lessons? Hit reply and tell us about it!

Surplus Scoop

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• Teachers are being morally blackmailed into working up to 25 hours of free overtime per week. Do you feel the same?

• Would you teach alongside your parents? The teacher shortage leads to this Florida mother and daughter becoming colleagues. 

• AI was supposed to level the playing field. But this Dutch study warns that algorithms can discriminate too.

Brainy Bits

The research is clear (for once)

This week’s study takes us all the way to Spain to see if peer feedback is actually a useful tool. The study, conducted by Ion et al. (2016), was not so focused on classroom management, like Floop is. Instead, this 600+ student study wanted to see if there were any positive academic impacts for students who actively participate in peer review activities. Let’s dive into how they did it.

The large student audience was of multiple ages, most of which were in the secondary and post-secondary category. However, results should be similar for younger grades. The study was a mixed method approach. This means that it combined an analysis of the actual peer feedback being conducted (i.e. what comments students were actually writing) and made use of a questionnaire to collect some emotional and long-term data. The three areas researchers were most concerned with were:

• What type of peer feedback are students engaging with the most? 📎

• What do students and their teachers think about it? 🤔

• What are the academic results of it? ⭐

Unlike many education-based studies, the results were incredibly clear. A strong majority of the type of feedback being written was related to the content of the work, as well as to the socio-emotional connection to it. This tells us that a majority of students are staying on topic, and actively trying to guide their peer writers to produce better content. So far that’s a win.

In terms of perception, both students and their teachers held peer review to a high regard. This was shown through the questionnaires; most participants not only enjoyed doing it, but felt that it made them better writers and produce better work. Their teachers of course agreed.

Lastly, in terms of academic results, they found an increase in scholarly success in their current courses. The real kicker however is that this academic success spread into their other course work as well. This means that the skills they gained from the peer review activities also positively impacted their future assignments.

Studies such as this showcase the importance of building critical thinking skills. Yes, test scores matter. But the skills students are taking with them beyond our classes are really why we teach. Peer feedback can be one of the strongest metacognitive skills we can prepare our students with. Let’s not deprive them of it - no matter the age.

Tell your friends about us!

Like what you’ve seen? Forward us to your friends and colleagues so y’all have something to talk about next week. 😎

Have an idea for some classroom tech, strategies, or research that you think is valuable for the community? Hit reply on this email and let us know.

Join us on social media for extra goodies, chats, and a bunch of extra resources!

References

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Floop. (2024). Meaningful Feedback, Faster. Retrieved from https://floopedu.com/ 

Brainy Bits:

Ion, G., Barrera-Corominas, A. & Tomàs-Folch, M. Written peer-feedback to enhance students’ current and future learning. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 13, 15 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-016-0017-y