Better understanding through writing: Investigating calibrated peer review™

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) was initially developed by UCLA in the 1990s as a way to use technology to increase the opportunities for student writing assignments. ₁ Writing about a concept has long been seen as one of the best ways to demonstrate student understanding. Unfortunately, it has always been true that more student writing assignments yields weekends lost in a sea of paper and grading schemes that ebb and flow in their accuracy. CPR applies the process of scientific peer review to education. Students perform research (study), write about their "findings", submit it for blind review (and act as reviewers themselves), and finally use peer feedback to improve their understanding. All of this is possible without intervention from the instructor using CPR. This paper reports on part of a continuing study on the utility of CPR in engineering education. In this instance, CPR was introduced into a writing-intensive laboratory course in chemical engineering. Students worked in teams, but were required to submit individually-crafted executive summaries using the CPR system. Assessment was based on instructor inspection of student work related to previous semesters and a survey administered to the students.