Double-blind multiple peer reviews to change students’ reading behaviour and help them develop their writing skills

Abstract

For a geography bachelor course about climate change, we replaced the end-of-course exam with one term paper and three term-paper peer reviews. Our objectives were to design a learning environment where students read continuously throughout the semester, develop their writing skills, become familiar with quality criteria for academic texts, and get trained in applying these. To support students in their term-paper writing and term-paper peer reviews, we arranged two annotated-bibliography exercises as optional learning activities. A t-test demonstrated a statistically significant increase in performance for those who participated in these exercises compared to those who did not. A survey confirmed that students still doubt their own and their peer students’ capability to provide authoritative reviews, but qualitative interviews supported the findings that a majority of students found the peerreview process valuable for their reading behaviours and the development of their writing skills. The improvements, however, were mostly related to form (such as structure, grammar, and how to set up a proper reference list) and less related to academic content.