Many students have difficulties writing in the field of chemistry. This study intends to show the effectiveness of student peer review in comparison with instructor review to improve the students\u27 writing skills. Three general... more
Many students have difficulties writing in the field of chemistry. This study intends to show the effectiveness of student peer review in comparison with instructor review to improve the students\u27 writing skills. Three general chemistry laboratory groups participated. In the first section, students had evaluated their peer\u27s first version of the written report and in the second one the instructor did the reviews of the first version. In all the sections the evaluation was performance-based using the same rubric. Then students submitted the corrected version to the instructors to get the final grade. A third laboratory section has passed a more rigorous review which included students\u27 peer review followed by instructor review. The results showed instructor reviews have a higher impact improving scientific writing performance. This suggests that student peer reviews don\u27t offer the most effective and useful feedback in all cases
