Peer review from teachers’ perspective: Comparing five E-business learning scenarios in higher education

Abstract

Peer review, a well-known method for quality assurance in science, is now being used as a teaching method in universities. In this work, we present an analysis of five different teaching scenarios that use peer review as the main method. All scenarios use the same technical setting within different courses in e-business education and include approximately 600 participants. Qualitative and quantitative data from over 300 students were collected and analyzed. When used for more laborious, elaborate, complex, and cognitively ambitious assignments, similar to writing academic papers, peer review tends to be less liked by inexperienced students. For well-structured, less time-consuming tasks such as management process modeling exercise, peer review is better accepted and higher rated even in settings with much larger groups. Further analysis of more than 30 criteria such as lead time, support expense, tutoring suitability, conflict potential, dimension of cognitive processes, meeting professional standards, self-motivation, and social interaction could show how the five different peer review scenarios lead to either better or less efficient learning performances.