Assigning papers is obviously an important part of a good philosophy class, since students need to improve their writing skills and, of course, they will also learn much more about the topics in the class through the process of writing.  As a general rule, students profit even more from writing assignments if the writing goes through multiple steps, and students not only write a paper but also rewrite their papers and incorporate feedback.  The problem, of course, is that it takes a great deal of time to read students papers, give the students feedback, and then reread the papers after they are rewritten.  

 

Peer reviewing of papers is a solution that promises to shorten the amount of instructor time and enrich student experience.  The idea is to to have students critique each other's papers and then rewrite their papers based on the feedback they received from the other students.  After all, learning to critique the writing of others is an important skill that students need to learn, and seeing the problems in the writing of other students should help them improve their own writing. While this sounds wonderful in theory, the reality is that students are often reluctant to comment candidly on each other's work, and are often more afraid of offending others than they are interested in obtaining the benefits of the practice.  Is there a way to resolve this dilemma? 

 

Part of the solution is to have students practice on past student papers. You can lead students through commenting on a past paper (or even a paper you fabricated, or used AI to write) and coach them on ways of giving constructive feedback. The best sort of paper to look at is a C- paper (according to your scoring methodology). How can a thoroughly mediocre paper (the most common paper type you'll receive without any direct writing instruction) improve?

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You can also have students score past papers (both stronger and weaker) with the paper assignment rubric before commenting on each other's papers. 

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One answer is to provide students with very specific instructions about how to go about the process of reviewing another paper.  Instead of just finding a few typos and then complimenting the paper in a general way, the idea is to help the student look for and comment on specific issues in paper writing. If the process is sufficiently guided, the chances of success are much higher. Here is the "Guided peer review" document employed by David Sackris. 

 

It's worth assigning some reading about writing as well if you want to really focus on writing instruction: Paul McHenry Robert's "How to say nothing in 500 words" gives timeless writing advice, is humorous, and helps students see things a bit from the instructor's perspective. Students also get a lot out of Mark Gaipa's "Breaking in to the conversation", which is especially useful when assigning a lengthier paper, or a research paper. I've had many students comment on the influence of this reading in the end of term course evaluations, and it provides fodder for great in class activities. For example, you can have students draw Gaipa's "conference ballrooms" at the end of each unit to get them thinking about how the authors in the unit relate to each other. 

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Here are a number of sources to help the process:

 

• Professor Ramona Ilea of Pacific University has had a lot of success with the peer review process.  She has made available a set of tips and good practices, as well as handouts and worksheets that she uses in her own classes. These materials are extremely helpful.  Ilea also recommends a number of other websites.

• Jim Pryor's "How to write a philosophy paper" has been a long standing web resource with detailed advice. 

• Shelly Kagan offers detailed advice here.

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Author: John Immerwahr
Update: May 16, 2010; 12/17/2025--David Sackris