Peer review is one of the best ways for students to learn — reading someone else's work sharpens your read on your own. Folio's course peer review makes it fair and blind, without the spreadsheet-and-email choreography that usually sinks it.
For instructors: setting it up
On an assignment, turn on peer review and choose how many reviews each student does. Folio then allocates reviewers with a balanced round-robin: every student reviews the same number of peers, and every submission receives the same number of reviews. No one gets overloaded and no one gets skipped — the allocation is even by construction, not by luck.
When allocation runs, each reviewer is granted access to exactly the documents they've been assigned, and nothing else.
Blind by design
Reviews are blind: reviewers see the work, not the author's name. That keeps feedback honest — students respond to the writing rather than to who wrote it. On the roster you'll see a quiet progress hint ("Peers 3/5") so you can tell at a glance who's done their reviews, without breaking anyone's anonymity.
For students: giving a review
When you're assigned reviews, you'll get the documents to read and a simple form for each: a rating and a written note. You can revise a review after submitting it — a second read often changes your mind, and that's fine. Take the note seriously; it's the part the author will actually use.
Getting your feedback back
Once reviews are in, each author sees a "Feedback from your peers" section on their own submission — the ratings and notes their classmates left, gathered in one place. It's feedback you can act on before a grade, from readers who just sat with the same assignment.
Tips
- Give students a rubric or a prompt. "What's the strongest and weakest part of this argument?" produces better notes than a bare rating.
- Model a good review once. A single worked example of a useful, specific, kind review sets the tone for the whole class.
- Use it as a draft stage. Peer review lands best between a draft and a final version, while there's still time to act on it.
Related: Folio Classroom for instructors · Sharing and collaborating