(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Knapik, Kevin; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Greg Francis
Classroom peer review strategies have the potential to help students engage in a vital practice of the scientific community. Performing peer and self-critique helped students calibrate their personal level of skepticism so that they can accept accurate claims more frequently when the claim is paired with data. Furthermore, students hold themselves to a higher standard when selecting data to be gathered in a designed experiment after applying critique to multiple approaches to the same assignment. This study was implemented to determine whether explicit peer review and self-reflection strategies impact student perception of the peer review process. Additionally, the study investigated whether the same strategies impact student success on performance assessments where they design their own experiment and critique a fictional experiment. The results indicated that practicing peer critique establishes a sense of confidence in the process. Students thought that peer review was valuable in making outcomes more accurate. Moreover, students were able to narrow their dependent variables more effectively when designing their own experiment and they were more effective at identifying elements of the fictional experiment that were problematic.
