Grade-Accountable Peer Editing: Students’ Perceptions of Peer-Editing Assignments

Introduction

Students in journalism today are being faced with many different demands upon entering the workforce. Multifaceted, digital communication technologies have molded the ways in which journalists must think, process, and write about information in a much different environment than journalists from years ago (Kawamoto, 2003). While the premise of journalism, providing factual information to the public with accuracy and timeliness (Society of Professional Journalists, 2017), is the same, the demand for producing factual and compelling information for the public requires journalists to be confident in their skills in creating well-crafted and accurate writing. Part of telling that story in a reliable manner, for the public by professional journalists, is producing high-quality work. If a story is not fundamentally and grammatically accurate, the public is less likely to engage with the information (Kaufhold, Valenzuela, & Gil de Zùñiga, 2010). Students in journalism and applied communication programs need to have experiences in school which align directly with the needs of the workplace (Waymer, Brown, Baker, & Fears, 2017).

An essential component to the writing process is proofreading and editing work to publish accurate and credible information (Hull, 1987; Keh, 1990). “Students achieve higher grades on papers they have peer reviewed than on papers they do not have peer reviewed” (Rieber, 2006, p. 323). Peer editing within a classroom setting can provide students with a more comprehensive learning experience by encouraging reflection and revision, and sharing of ideas about specific skills and information related to writing (Papadopoulos, Lagkas, & Demetriadis, 2012). Within this framework, peer editing can solidify the teachings and edits of instructors (Yang, 2011). This process is much different from teachers giving feedback because while instructors tend to focus on what is not correct about the assignment, students tend to offer their personal thoughts and understanding about the assignment and how it relates to the assigned topic (Rieber, 2006). Peer editing and critically evaluating another’s work can encourage students to reflect on their assignments and writing more critically than without that experience (Rieber, 2006). Peer review also aligns with the hallmark of assessment within higher education, in that students are integral in their educational experience. “The assessment era promotes integration of assessment and instruction, seeing the student as an active person who shares responsibility, reflects, collaborates and conducts a continuous dialog with the teacher” (Dochy, Segers, & Sluijsmans, 1999, p. 331).

Literature Review

Peer editing has been referred to as peer assessment, peer review, and the like (Cho & Schunn, 2007; Papadopoulos et al., 2012; Topping, 1998). Research has shown a direct, reciprocal relationship exists between the number of peer reviews a student completes and the increase in his or her writing ability, and his or her overall attitude toward writing and peer editing (Cho & Schunn, 2007; Papadopoulos et al., 2012). “All of us may expect to be peer assessor and assessee at different times and in different contexts. Consequently, involvement in peer assessment at school can develop transferable skills for life” (Topping, 2009, p. 24).

Bickford (2015) recognized while the abundance of research recognizes the benefits of peer review in the writing process, it is still fraught with issues related to mismanagement of time, student collaboration efforts, and overall student acceptance of the activity. Peer-assessment exercises often lack substance due to reviewers’ friendship status, perceived social conformity within a class setting, and/or writing abilities normalizing around the mean of other classmate’s assignments (Topping, 2009). Anderson and Flash (2014) found by incorporating peer review into a college-level class, the students’ writing was significantly improved, unless the student was a confident writer to begin with. It was also found that students were more intentional and thoughtful about their writing after participating in multiple peer reviews because they had a greater efficacy in their writing skills (Anderson & Flash, 2014). It was recommended students be given multiple opportunities to practice and hone their peer-reviewing skills within a writing course. It was also noted students first saw more improvement in their peer-review skills and then their writing skills, providing evidence for the inclusion of a semester-long, peer-review process to reach maximum potential for students (Anderson & Flash, 2014).

Peer review is a process that has been studied from various perspectives of instruction and from an array of classrooms. Papadopoulos et al. (2012) identified four elemental stages of peer review. In the first stage, students produce the work. The second stage allows for the instructor to assign reviewers to the students’ work. The third stage is for students to review and provide feedback on the assignment they have been given to peer review. The fourth and final stage is for students to be given time to revise their writing assignment based upon the peer reviewer’s comments and edits. When assigning peer reviewers within a class, there are several methods in which the groupings can be established. Students can be grouped with multiple reviewers, reciprocal pairings, or with free-selection formations to complete peer reviews (Papadopoulos & Obwegeser, 2016). Each of these pairing strategies present unique opportunities for students, as well as challenges—including not enough feedback with only one other partner and nonsubstantive feedback with too many reviewers (Anderson & Flash; Cho & Schunn, 2007; Papadopoulos et al., 2012). Falchikov (1995) noted students in small groups expressed negative reactions to awarding grades to classmates during peer-assessment activities, and found students to identify a greater impact to their learning experience through reflection and critical feedback.

Peer review is a complex activity that requires students to utilize multiple skills related to, “thinking, comparing, contrasting, and communicating” (Topping, 1998, p. 255). When students are employing all of these skills to successfully complete an assignment, they are building upon previous skills learned in classes and forming ways in which to process information in new and different contexts. Peer review can enhance students’ team working abilities and encourage active engagement in the education process (Topping, 1998). “Learning how to give and accept criticism, justify one’s position, and reject suggestions are all forms of social and assertion skills” (Topping, 1998, p. 256). Peer review can provide students in higher education the opportunity to be “mentored into a new profession that demands collaborative problem posing, reflection, and resolution. Peer review has been shown to promote the recognition of good practice as well as critical and constructive collaborative dialogue” (Brill & Hodges, 2011, p. 117).

While it has been shown that peer review of work can improve students’ confidence with their writing skills, issues can arise when peers do not take the task seriously and do not provide meaningful comments and/or corrections on a peer review (Bickford, 2015; van den Berg, Admiraal, & Pilot, 2006). Therefore, this research sought to determine whether providing an accountable grading system in a structured assignment format would impact students’ perceptions of the value in learning editing skills in a journalism writing course.

The research questions guiding this study were as follows:

Method

To understand students’ perceptions of a grade-accountable, peer-editing assignment’s impact on their learning and perceived writing skills, two focus groups were conducted with upper-division agricultural communication students within a journalism course specific to the major. The course was taught in the fall of 2015 and 2016 at a large, land-grant university. A focus group with each class was conducted upon the conclusion of the semester. Each class was given a syllabus, description, and grading rubric of the peer-editing assignment at the beginning of the course. In the peer-editing assignment, students were to find a partner to review each of their four major writing assignments for the semester. The students selected their own partners and were not required to keep the same partner for every assignment. The peer-editing assignment required students to receive their partner’s writing assignment, edit the story for grammar, punctuation, Associated Press (AP) style, and overall journalistic flow and style. The rubric for the peer-editing assignment gave point values for every grammatical, punctuation, or style edit missed by the peer editor. The students submitted their personal writing assignment and their partner’s story with the markup of edits he or she completed for grading to the instructor. It was up to each individual to acknowledge or disregard their peer reviewer’s edits for the submission of his or her final assignment. The students were not held responsible for the grade earned by their partner on the writing assignment, but on their own editing markup of their partner’s story. In short, the students received two grades assigned by the instructor: one for their written story and one for their peer editing of a partner’s story. The two grades were separate for each student. The same procedure was followed for each of the four major writing assignments in the class both semesters.

Upon the conclusion of the semester, a focus group was held with each class, specifically focused on the students’ thoughts about the integration of a grade-accountable, peer-editing assignment. The same moderator’s guide was used with both classes and moderated by a third party. The instructor did not receive the verbatim transcription of the focus groups, with all identifying information stripped from the document, until after final grades were submitted. The transcripts were analyzed and coded for themes using thematic analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006).

Results

Twenty-three students participated in the two focus groups. Fourteen students were in one semester and nine students were in the second semester’s focus group. The students in the course were upper-division students, with seven being male and 16 being female. From both focus groups, three common themes emerged: (a) grade/performance anxiety, (b) helpful yet challenging, and (c) real-world expectation disconnect.

Discussion/Conclusion/Recommendations

The concept of incorporating peer-editing assignments into a course is not a novel approach for a writing course; however, this study provided insight into how students perceived peer-editing assignments in a writing class when there was an incentive associated with their performance on the task.

Related to RQ1: How did students respond to integrating an accountable grading system for peer-editing writing assignments in a journalism writing course? Not surprisingly, students expressed concern about their grades in the class being negatively impacted by the peer-editing assignment. This is to be expected when introducing any assignment into a course’s curriculum. Interestingly, within the thread of discussion about the students’ grade, the students expressed almost an equal, if not greater, concern for their partner’s graded writing assignment than their own. The students expressed a heightened sense of responsibility and anxiety serving as the peer reviewer for their classmate’s paper. Even though their partner’s writing assignment grade was not linked to their peer-editing grade, the process brought about a self-created position of responsibility for the students, assuming the role as editor for their partner’s work. The discussion on the students’ motivations for writing a clean and well-thought-out paper for their classmates was interesting within the context of pedagogy research. While the students knew they would be submitting their work to the instructor, as with most classes, they expressed more concern about the need to have a quality story to present to their peer. By introducing a grade associated with the assignment of peer editing, the students placed additional stress on themselves with the added variables of friendships and grade accountability. Similar to Bickford (2015), this could be another way of adding accountability and real-world experiences to students in the classroom. Friendships exist in the workplace; however, accuracy and constructive feedback for the sake of the company/organization are important as well. This is a point that could be explored further in the context of peer-editing assignments to improve student writing efficacy.

Interestingly, when asked what could be done to improve student learning about peer editing, students expressed an interest in having multiple peer reviewers for a writing assignment. Based on the surrounding discussion related to the students’ concern about their personal grade and their self-induced role of responsibility for their partner’s writing assignment grade, it is difficult to determine whether this suggestion was made altruistically in the name of learning, or as a means of self-preservation of responsibility. With much of the discussion centered around the students’ anxiety of being in a position of authority as peer editor of another’s paper, this suggestion could be a way for students to remove themselves from holding the sole responsibility of reviewing and improving another’s work. While this would help alleviate anxiety on the students’ part, more research needs to be conducted to determine whether the idea of multiple reviewers is truly a benefit to the students’ improvement in work, or a benefit to the students’ stress level. More research on the integration of placing students in positions of responsibility, real or perceived, and its impact on student performance of peer editing should be completed to further understand the students’ suggestion.

Related to RQ2: How did students perceive the affect an accountable, peer-editing grading assignment had on their writing abilities in a journalism writing course? Students often commented while they understood peer editing was a benefit to their writing and professional skills, they were not invested in the practice unless they were incentivized with a grade. Grades have an insurmountable power hold on students and have shaped the way students view the classroom. In this study, while some students connected the benefit of reading and editing their peer’s work to the growth of their own writing skills, many concluded their comments with underwhelming experiences with peer editing. A more conscious effort needs to be made to show students the causal link between reading and critiquing others’ work to their own growth and writing performance (Topping, 2009). While it was noted in this study that connecting a student’s performance and effort with peer editing did encourage students to critically engage with editing, more efforts to link the activities of editing and writing for the benefit of students’ value of peer editing and beyond the classroom should be explored (Bickford, 2015). In this same vein of inquiry would be future research in how students are being taught to edit work. Exploring methods of instruction related to editing could be beneficial for the long-term success of students.

The most significant finding from this research was the disconnect between students’ learning experience in the classroom and their perceptions about the real-world workplace. In several instances, the students mentioned that editing should be the responsibility of a superior or not within the parameter of their “job.” The students seemed to have a mind-set that someone else, ultimately, was the professional writer or communication expert who would be willing and available to proof their work for final release. Circling back to the previous discussion, highlighting how and why certain instructional strategies in the classroom impact students in the real world may be beneficial to preparing them for the rigors of workplace accountability (Dochy et al., 1999). As Brill and Hodges (2011) mentioned, peer review is an area of research in higher education that needs to be explored further to understand how the needs of real-world professionals can best be addressed within the learning environment of the classroom to effectively prepare students. Peer-editing activities could serve as a catalyst to prepare college students for working in teams, personal accountability, and responsibilities beyond their own personal gain. Following Waymer et al. (2017), experiential learning opportunities and integrating professional alumni into course discussions, projects, editing exercises, may provide a real-world connection for students to understand the importance of learning and practicing editing skills and how those skills transcend across different career fields. This research highlights the need to understand how students are processing and aligning instruction in the classroom with real-world skills; thus, evaluating how prepared students are for assuming the role as the professional upon graduation.

It is the responsibility of faculty, researchers, and college programs to build comprehensive learning environments and opportunities to prepare students for the real-world workplace; however, instructors should be mindful of creating connections for students between classroom skills and application of those skills upon graduation. As learned from this study, it is imperative to not assume students will automatically connect the skills learned in the classroom to the workplace.