Experiences from peer review of
lab reports
Is there a new way of effective feedback to students?
Experiences from peer review of lab reports
Is there a new way of effective feedback to students?
Magnus Anderson, School of ICT, KTH
and
Maria Weurlander, School of ECE, KTH
• A few words about our study
• Experience it yourself !
• Discussions about how to proceed
History behind
2009 - Teaching assistants dissatisfied with report quality
2010 – Redesign of module using peer review
Increase student’s ability to self-assess their reports
Positive student response
2014 – Detailed student questionnaire about the module
Semi-statistical analysis on rating items (27 responses)
Contextual text analysis on free text answers
Most obvious result
”The classification scheme was important for my
understanding of how to assess reports.”
A few testimonies
”To let us assess each other’s report was a good module.
One should find as many errors as possible in the report and
then you learn how to think critically”
”It gives an opportunity to train how to make an assessment
of someone else’s report. This also trains one’s own ability to
realize faults in the own writing.”
”The feedback that I got on my own report was very good, so
I got an opportunity to improve my own report writing.”
How to use the classification scheme
Two-step procedure:
1. i) Read the report critically
ii) find errors and faults
iii) classify the severity of them.
(related to critical thinking?)
2. Sum up all the severities and make an
overall judgement on the report.
(related to assessment only?)
Try it yourself !
Critically review the handed out report. Make the first step!
i) Read the report critically
ii) find errors and faults
iii) classify the severity of them
Severity scale
Incorrect or misleading reporting (very serious)
Non-acceptable but not misleading reporting (serious)
Mistakes that need to be corrected (minor)
Acceptable reporting that can be improved (details)
Open discussions
What were your experiences when testing this?
Suggestions for how to proceed?