Peer review is failing in your classroom and take a wild a guess at who is to blame for it. No, it is not the students and their lack of effort. You’re most likely to blame. Yes, you with the fancy degree and cool letters behind your name. Sometimes you have to do some self-reflection and perhaps think of what you might be doing wrong when conducting peer review. I think many teachers find it easier to blame the students rather than blaming themselves. Students deserve instructors who are willing to improve their teaching methods. Reading Lynne Belcher’s A Failure of the Process Paradigm as Viewed from the Trenches and Charlotte Brammer and Mary Rees’ Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective helped me gain some much-needed insight concerning peer review. The survey results include thoughts of peer review from the student’s and instructor’s viewpoint. After reading the articles with my pretty eyes passed down to me from Queen Nefertiti, I suggested three major areas that may be preventing you from having the successful peer review you always dreamed of. If it feels like I am yelling at you, I am, because clearly no one yelled at you at any of your professional development days.

1. You are not being patient enough during the process

Your students are not going to be experts at peer review on their first day or first week, just like you were not the god of pedagogy on your first day of teaching. There will be ups, downs, right turns, and many left turns. Okay, sorry, I think I got whiplash from reading that last sentence. An instructor from A Failure of the Process Paradigm as Viewed from the Trenches said, "I've never been completely satisfied with the way it's gone, and students have consistently indicated on course evaluations that they are frustrated with it”. Of course, you may never be completely satisfied with every aspect of your student’s peer review, but maybe try to focus on smaller goals that you would love to see them excel at. There has to be something they do in peer review really well, now build from there and the rest will follow. Try to center peer review around some literature that the students find engaging. The students may rather engage with material that is more current or something more representative of various identities. Have you tried asking your students what they need from you to make them enjoy peer review? They do have intelligence, it is okay to speak to them. Don’t just give up, your life depends on it. Well maybe not your life, probably just your tenure. So yea, your life.

2. You are not clear in your objectives for the students

By the time students enter college, they have probably been introduced to all sorts of peer review terminology. Be clear in your instructions and the expectations of the students during their peer review process. By the time students frantically wander into college, they have probably been introduced to peer review terms that range from peer edit to peer evaluation. Your students don’t know if they should just check for grammar and punctuation or do a more reflective analysis. According to the survey in Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective, 77.3 percent of instructors spend less than half of the class on preparing students for peer review. Peer review is not some kind of skill you are born with, you need to teach it like it is a new theory being introduced in the class so students have a clear understanding. There is no way you are effectively teaching peer review in half of a class period. Another statistic that boggles my mind is that 40.9 percent of instructors give handouts to students to teach peer review. With having students with multiple types of learning styles, you have to do more than that. Peer review isn’t just like some recipe for chocolate chip cookies where the ingredients and directions are enough to get a product. You need to do that thing you were hired to do and teach.

3. You don’t empower your students enough for them to be confident in themselves

I know one of my biggest problems in undergrad was me not being confident in my peers or myself. I assumed that because I am not the instructor that I didn’t have anything meaningful to contribute to peer review. My professors did not explicitly tell me that peer review was far more than just being right or wrong. Not every comment on the peer review papers has to be PhD dissertation level critique. Peer review is not reserved for just the privileged or elite, you know, like being a Colts fan. I read in Charlotte Brammer and Mary Rees’ Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective, that almost half of the students feel confident in their ability to review papers occasionally or seldomly. I remember so many times in undergrad where I was frustrated with peer review because I was trying to “fix” my peer’s paper but didn’t know what to say because I felt underqualified. I’m sure lying politicians can relate. Your students are intelligent, let them reflect on peer review assignments in a genuine way. If they don’t reach the marks you have set then simply guide them to where you want them to be, but always reaffirm their intellectual prowess along the way.

Hopefully I have given you some good advice or encouragement so you can start having successful peer review in the classroom. If any of this made you feel uncomfortable, that’s great, now channel that energy into your peer review. If you feel like you do perform the three major points well, then keep up the good work. Now hurry up and get to class so you can show your students what you learned from my amazing scripture that I allowed to bless your human eyes. Take from this article what is most useful to you and if none or some of this doesn’t apply to you, then just let it go Elsa.