Exploring Peer Review in the Computer Science Classroom

In computer science, students could benefit from more opportunities to learn important, high-level concepts and to improve their learning skills. Peer review is one method to encourage this by providing students with the opportunity to evaluate other people's work and to receive feedback on their own projects. This allows for rich learning experience but it is not immediately obvious how to create a programming project review that will improve the students' conceptual understanding, require higher level thinking, and be engaging. The current literature does not typically address differences between review implementations or provide reasons for design decisions. This work explored how two different types of reviews affected the students' learning of concepts, high-level thinking, and engagement. There were indications that the type of review affected how well students addressed the concept they were reviewing and the comments' length. This shows that the review's type may affect student engagement and conceptual learning. There were also differences in how they reviewed the concepts of Abstraction, Decomposition, and Encapsulation, suggesting that the concepts are being learned in different ways. Both of these results have an impact on the use of peer review computer science but need further investigation.

1. Besides the benefits to learning, this is also a necessary skill for students to have as it prepares them for professional activity. Being able to read, understand, and evaluate code is needed throughout the stages of a program’s life cycle (Deimel 1985). For instance, when writing or maintaining programs, one must be able to look at what has been done in order to build on it, modify it, or correct it. That is true if for small, individual school work and for large, group-developed, professional products. (@perez-quinones2009, 2)
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1. Looking at the other side, receiving feedback from others is an activity of synthesis, analysis, and evaluation. Students go over the comments of the reviewers and look for patterns and try to add them to their own understanding of their project. (@perez-quinones2009, 2)