The only challenge I have been facing so far is to decide whether to keep the peer-review activities in class or move them to the online part. My plan is to try both methods in my current course and see later which one is more practical. I think that’s the only way to find out.
For the sake of time, it seems more reasonable to do the peer-reviews online and use class time for more content-based material. However, through my experiment in Week One, I discovered that students take pleasure in discussing each other’s writing in class. The 20 minutes I allowed them to complete this assignment are worthwhile. The personal feel in this activity is certainly different from the virtual version. For example, I remember in one of my online classes one student felt a bit touched by a peer’s review of his essay. The virtual “cold” aspect of this activity made it appear so. I’m certain that if they had discussed the review F2F (instead of online) that misunderstanding wouldn’t have happened. Well, it was just a one-time minor accident, so I’ll keep using Canvas for peer-reviewing and we’ll see how it turns out in the end.
