It is critical to get the students’ commitment to participate seriously in the role of teacher. On the first day of my ICN course, I explained the importance of peer reviews to achieving the objectives of the course, and I asked students who were not prepared to take that responsibility seriously to drop the course.

When using peer reviewers, be sure to set realistic expectations and communicate these to the students. Very few novice peer reviewers will give expert level feedback, but they can be taught to give helpful, not harmful feedback.

I made sure to rotate reviewers so students would not get stuck with an uncommitted peer reviewer for the entire semester. Some people might reasonably take the position that repeated use of the same reviewer would lead to better communication between the reviewer and the reviewee (is that a word?).

There are people out there who have used peer reviewers longer and more extensively than I have, including the folks at BYU. I would really like to hear how other people train and use student peer reviewers, or adjunct or lay reviewers for that matter.