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Introduction
In recent years a considerable amount of research has been directed towards developing educational systems that foster collaborative learning. Collaborative learning systems provide an environment for students to interact with other students, exchange ideas, provide feedback and use the feedback to improve their own work. Systems such as Scaffolded Writing and Rewriting in the Discipline (SWoRD—now called Peerceptiv) (Cho and Schunn 2007) and Expertiza (Gehringer 2010) are web-based, peer-review systems, that allows students to exchange ideas and to build shared knowledge. The past few years have witnessed a growth in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera and Udacity, which serve as platforms for web-based collaborative learning. MOOCs require a scalable means of assessment, and for material that cannot be assessed by multiple-choice tests, peer-review fills the bill. Text-based feedback helps authors identify mistakes in their work, and learn how to improve it.
Students learn from giving feedback as well as from receiving it. Rada et al. (1994) found that students who evaluated their peers’ work were more likely to improve the quality of their own work than those students who did not provide peer reviews.
The classroom peer review process is very similar to reviewing articles for scientific journals, where students (reviewers) provide reviews and the instructor (editor) decides on a final grade (decision to accept or reject the submitted paper) based on the reviews. Scientific reviewers are likely to have prior experience reviewing articles and a considerable knowledge in the area of the author’s submission. Students on the other hand are less likely to have had any prior reviewing experience. They have to be guided to provide high-quality reviews that may be useful to their peers.
Reviews aid in the decision-making process, whether it is a student’s grade or the decision to accept or reject a paper. It is therefore important to ensure that the reviews are of a good quality. Review comments may be vague or unjustified. The first two comments in Table 1 are generic and do not refer to a specific object in the author’s submission. For instance, what type of “work” does the “example” need? Or, why is the “organization” poor? These reviews are ambiguous, and need to be supported with more information. Reviews must provide detailed...