Facilitating the Peer Review Process

Peer review, the process of improving the quality of work done by a peer of approximately equal caliber, is posited to be an effective educational tool and learning process. Unfortunately, many students participating in peer review lack confidence in the value of their feedback or experience difficulty maintaining interest in another student’s work, thus tending to create feedback that is superficial, overly flattering, and brief. By developing a multiplayer game, we hope to facilitate the peer editing process and address these challenges. After four rounds of prototypes and user testing, the final design of the game allows for synchronous editing so that users build upon each other’s comments, creating accurate, thorough, and relevant feedback in an engaging manner. The software is novel in how it presents content to users, categorizes feedback, and integrates peer input, thereby providing an environment for collaborative discussion. The game is currently being implemented and will be tested in writing and rhetoric classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.