The Catalyst Peer Review tool is an excellent instrument to promote collaboration and feedback between students. It allows students to view, create, and discuss projects, papers, Web pages, and other assignments. Individuals or groups can create documents. Instructors may specify whether participants can comment on specific sentences, paragraphs, or the entire document. The comments are color-coded to identify contributors. Below are some ideas for an effective use of Peer Review.

Facilitate student engagement with Peer Review

Peer Review is most effective if it is integrated with other class activities. Expectations and guidelines for participation should be clear to students. If you encourage students to build on each other's comments rather than repeating them, you will significantly improve their learning. You can also configure Peer Review to let your students use pseudonyms. Only the Peer Review owner will have access to each participant's identity.

Allow enough time for planning, maintenance, and grading

Keep in mind that planning setting up, reading and monitoring students' comments on Peer Review can take some time. Peer Review tracks students as they make comments on their classmates' work, making it easier for you to grade their participation. Keep in mind, however, that Peer Review tracking provides you only with quantitative information about participants' use of Peer Review. You will still need to allow time to assess the quality of their work.

Consider the format and number of assignments

Students may only submit one main document per assignment, so plan your assignments with this in mind. Participants can upload text or HTML documents with links to graphics, sound and video files. They may also paste text from other programs (such as Microsoft Word), or link to active Web pages. If the documents are not in text-only or HTML format, however, participants will only be able to comment at the document level.

Decide if you want to create groups

Using groups in Peer Review can improve the quality of student discussion, make a large class seem smaller, and encourage student collaboration. If you would like to use groups, Peer Review can randomly assign students to groups as they log on to the program for the first time. You may also manually assign students to groups. You will need to configure your Peer Review for groups before students start their first Peer Review session.

Plan how participants will access your Peer Review page

Although having a class Web page is not necessary to use the Peer Review tool, it can be a useful starting point to direct students to this and other tools. The URLs of the Peer Review tool can be long and complicated to transmit and retype. By creating a Web site with a link to the Peer Review, you can ensure that your students will more easily find it. You may also restrict access to your Web site.

Assess your students' access to technology

Because it is Web-based, this resource requires students to have access to the Web to use it. Although you may not notice a difference connecting on campus, students connecting from home via modem will have to wait considerably longer to view Web pages with images, sound, and video. You may want to advise your students to limit the size of their files.

Consider the size of your Peer Review

Each Peer Review participant chooses a color for the text of his or her comments as he or she logs into the Peer Review for the first time. Currently, each Peer Review setup is limited to 110 colors, and thus 110 students. Even if you have your students working in smaller groups, the entire Peer Review is limited to 110 colors. If you wish to create a Peer Review with more than 110 students, please contact the Catalyst developers at (206) 616-3406. Keep in mind that a Peer Review with too many participants is likely to be cumbersome.

Decide which level of commenting to use

During Peer Review configuration, you will need to select a level of commenting for each assignment. Comments made while in the "comments on the entire document" mode will be appended to the bottom of the document itself. Comments made in the "comments on specific paragraphs" mode will appear either in the margin next to the paragraph or, if the document is in HTML format, immediately following the paragraph. Comments made while in "comments on specific sentences" mode will appear immediately following the sentence. To make your Peer Review more effective, you should consider both the assignment and the students' familiarity with the peer reviewing process when selecting the level of commenting.