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Peer Review of another group’s detailed protocol
Name of reviewer___________________________
Group reviewed (number)_________
The process:
1. You now have a hardcopy of another group’s detailed protocol.
2. You will give them feedback as a hardcopy with two components:
2.1. Write comments directly on their protocol.
2.2. Also answer the questions below, either by hand on a separate piece of paper, or download
these guidelines from the course website and type it, then print it out.
3. You will give these two things to the group on Tuesday, October 18.
4. Someone from the other group will email me, and CC the TA, telling who gave them peer reviews,
and they will give you a grade from 1-5.
5. When you tell me about the performance of your reviewers, you are grading them from 1-5. Perfect
5 means they answered all the questions, seemed to understand what you are doing, or said they
did not so that you could re-write, and seemed to really be trying their best to give good feedback. If
they did not understand what you are doing, you should consider that to be valuable feedback that
you need to explain things better. (OK, in some cases you may have explained it well and they just
didn’t get it.)
How to do the peer review:
Answer the following questions. It’s OK to write “see comments written on protocol” if it’s easier to
write your comments on the protocol itself.
Important: Criticize them ruthlessly. If you can help this other group do a better project, you are saving
them from losing points later when I grade their writeup. Criticize the writing! The grammar,
punctuation, spelling.
1. What is this group’s objective?
2. What are their factors and what are the levels of the factors (put in factor(level 1, level 2, ..) form).
3. How many treatments?
4. How many replicates per treatment?
5. What are the experimental units? Did they correctly identify them?
6. Control:
6.1. What variables (if any) are they controlling?
6.2. Is there something they should be controlling that they are not?
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7. Blocking:
7.1. Are they using a blocking variable? Or more than one? If yes, what is it?
7.2. Do they seem to understand what a blocking variable is? Are they blocking correctly? Are they
explaining it clearly?
8. Randomization:
8.1. What things are they randomizing? List them.
8.2. Do you think they are randomizing everything that they should? Are they randomizing things
that they don’t need to randomize? Explain.
8.3. After reading the paragraphs on how they will perform each randomization, do you think they
have adequately explained how they are doing it? If you can help them improve the writing,
tell them how, or at least tell how/why you are confused.
9. Do you feel that another student (if s/he had the same knowledge of the subject matter that this
group does) could read this protocol and replicate the experiment? Have enough details been
given?
10. Do you think there are any safety issues that they have not adequately addressed?
11. Is there anything at all about this experiment that you think they haven’t thought through very well?
If yes, make a suggestion to the group. Remember, you are helping them out, so don’t hold back!
12. Did you make any comments about grammar, punctuation, or writing in general? How many
suggestions did you make?
13. Do you have any additional comments to share with this group to help them out as they proceed
with their experiment? Praise for good things is nice, too!