Using technology and structured peer reviews to enhance students’ writing

This article reports an initiative to improve student writing by incorporating technology-based structured peer review in the revision process. Although the most important step of writing, the revision step, is overlooked by students for several reasons. We describe a successful 10-week long intervention with students from upper-level undergraduate courses. Effectiveness was assessed by means of a pre- and post-test design, student feedback, and student performance scores. Areas where the intervention was found to have most significant impact were the following: students’ overall ability to make revisions, overall English writing, and feedback skills. Educators would find technology-based peer review helpful by having students learn and apply revision efforts in their written assignments. Benefits and trade-offs of the innovative pedagogy are discussed and directions for future study indicated.