Abstract:

As more educational institutions move to include online educational models, students are beginning to miss out on peer-to-peer interactions. Traditionally students would go to class and be surrounded by their peers, but in an online environment, students are not physically able to be near their peers and can miss out on that physical interaction. Augmenting peer reviews in an online course can help to alleviate this lack of direct interaction and help students feel they are a larger part of the learning process. It can also help students feel they are part of the learning process.

Peer reviews have long been a part of face to face interaction within a classroom, and this interaction can not only help individual students create better projects, but it can help all of the students in the course be more successful in their classwork.

Teaching online creates a challenge in regard to constructive peer reviews, but it is a challenge worth tackling in order to create an active learning classroom focused on student success. The various tools available in today’s online classrooms encourage teachers to utilize not only text-based tools, but also video and audio tools.

This paper will explore the benefits of utilizing and augmenting peer reviews in an online classroom. Research and examples of online peer-reviews will be included as well as suggestions on how teachers can include peer-reviews in their online courses.

Keywords:

Peer-to-Peer Instruction, Active Learning, Student-centered, Constructive Criticism, Online Learning.