Growing a Peer Review Culture among Graduate Students

Usual processes for pursuing education excellence in a graduate56 program are candidate selection, coursework, research, and thesis defense. This paper is an experience report on a complementary approach: the growing of a peer review culture among graduate students. We instruct first-year masters and doctoral students on principles for preparing a thesis proposal. Students present their proposals in collective discussion sessions with feedback from professors. The students then submit their proposals through a web interface and are instructed on the role they will play next – of anonymous referees of their peers’ proposals. The referee reports and general statistics are made available to all participating students and advisers. Updated proposals are submitted to an annual workshop open to all participating students and advisers. About 60 students take part in this annual series of seminars with peer review and workshop, generating individual thesis proposals and 180 referee reports, 3 for each proposal. Students and their advisers receive detailed feedback on individual participation as author and referee. The main strength of this experience is the opportunity to assimilate the techniques of objective criticism and to reflect about the quality of own and others’ work. The paper outlines future research and development issues.