Peer Review is an online resource that allows instructors to automatically distribute students’ draft writing assignments for peer-to-peer evaluations. Students provide feedback based on predetermined or customized rubrics, metrics, and questions selected by the instructor. Once the peer review process is complete, students review the feedback and make any necessary revisions to their papers prior to final submission.

Turnitin provides a simple, step-by-step approach to the peer review process:

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The Instructor creates a Peer Review assignment in Turnitin.

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Students submit their original writing assignment in Turnitin by the date specified by the Instructor.

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Based on the Instructor’s settings, the writing assignments are distributed for peer review. The distribution method can be a combination of the following: random distribution by Turnitin, self-selection by the student and/or allocated by the Instructor.

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Students write their peer reviews based on criteria and metrics customized by the Instructor or selected from the Turnitin library.

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After the due date of the peer review assignment, students review the comments made by classmates and make any necessary revisions to their original assignment. Instructors have the option of including their feedback as well.

Benefits: Peer Review

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Allows students to analyze peer feedback of their own work for possible improvement.

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Allows students to review and reflect on other students’ viewpoints.

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Allows for anonymous reviews.

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Develops critical thinking skills.

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Enhances editing skills.

As a reminder, Turnitin is an application that has been made available to faculty since Fall 2005 and has been primarily used for plagiarism detection in the written assignments submitted by students. Turnitin searches through a repository of previously submitted papers, journals, periodicals and other Internet-related resources. An Originality Report is then generated highlighting the level of plagiarism detected in the student’s paper and includes the sources where the plagiarism text was detected. Using this report, the instructor makes the final determination of the actual level of plagiarism based on the students’ proper use of citations, quotations, and references within the paper.

Benefits: Originality Reports

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Serves as a deterrent for plagiarism because it increases students’ awareness that their written work will be closely examined which encourages students to produce written work that is original and properly cited.  Reports display the likelihood of plagiarism as well as the sources of plagiarism.  Allows the instructor to focus on teaching students how to do proper research versus spending valuable time searching for sources of plagiarism.

We hope that you will use these tools in your class to help your University maintain its high standards of academic integrity.