Synchronous Peer Review

Overview

Peer review is an essential activity where students share their work with one another. and provide feedback. Through peer review, students gain insight from a variety of perspectives which helps to enhance a students own understanding. Students need to engage and interact with their peers. Often times, the feedback from their peers is just as helpful as instructor feedback. So incorporating some form of peer review is important. 

 

Peer Review using Zoom

Using Zoom, you can meet synchronously with your class as a whole. Peer review can be approached in a few different ways using Zoom:

  • You can have each student present and then open it up to feedback and questions. 
  • You can break students into groups where they can present or share their ideas while the peers provide feedback. 

It is recommended that you provide a rubric to help guide students in the process of critiquing work.

 

Using Zoom in Canvas

First enable your Zoom account:

  1. Log in to Virginia Tech Zoom at https://virginiatech.zoom.us/ Links to an external site.. 
  2. On the computer you're teaching from, download and install the Zoom Client.

 

Show the Zoom Tool in Canvas

 

  1. Go to the Canvas course site and click Settings. 
  2. Click the Navigation tab.  Course tools are sorted into two sections: top (visible to students) and bottom (hidden from students)
  3. Drag the Zoom tool from the bottom to the top section, scroll down, and Save

 

Schedule and Start a Meeting

 

You can't hold an instant meeting via Canvas. Instead, schedule a meeting. To hold the scheduled meeting instantly, schedule it for the current time. 

  1. Go to the Canvas course's Zoom tool.
  2. Under Upcoming Meetings, click Schedule a New Meeting.
  3. Set the meeting to start now and end one hour after the class ends.
    • You can end class whenever you want. This is to make sure Zoom doesn't stop the meeting before you're done. 
  4. Uncheck Enable join before host.
  5. Click Schedule.

 

Using Breakout Rooms

Zoom official tutorial video

 

Creating Breakout Rooms

While in your Zoom meeting:

  • Click on the Breakout Rooms icon in your host control bar (if you do not see 'Breakout rooms' icon, click on the 3-dot icon in the host navigation bar).

Breakout rooms

  • Select the number of breakout rooms you would like to create and whether you would like participants to be assigned to rooms Automatically or Manually.
  • Click Open Rooms (if you selected manually, you will be prompted to assign participants into each group and then click open rooms).

 

Best Practices

  • Create a rubric to help students understand the expectations.
  • Offer opportunities for students to also write out their feedback asynchronously.
  • Promote critical thinking by using peer review to talk through a process, address concerns or areas of ambiguity.

 

Additional Resources