A framework for collaborative peer review for group-written documents

The collaborative nature of the engineering discipline is often translated to the classroom via group project work. Engineering course projects often share characteristics such as a long duration (8 or more weeks), several project milestones, often aligned to written deliverables submitted for grading, and multiple students per team, typically between 3-8 students. This project developed an innovative framework to enable maximizing the benefits of peer review on student writing to group-written documents. The framework includes: method to create review teams of students who review documents written by project teams; a process for facilitating the review process in class to balance individual insights with group-developed priorities for revision; and a feedback device to continuously improve the peer review process. The framework has been implemented in junior and senior level courses, including in senior engineering capstone courses, and has resulted in improved project reports, deeper ability for students to critically assess peer work, and, most significantly, overall improved project outcomes.