Does Peer Code Review Change My Mind on My Submission?

Abstract

Peer review can be used as a collaborative learning activity in which people with similar competencies evaluate other students' submissions and/or provide feedback. It provides many potential benefits such as timely feedback, high motivation, reduced workload for teachers, collaboration among the students, improving the code, and seeing other solution strategies. However, there are also challenges and contradictory results such as low motivation, participation, quality, and no improvements in the reviews. This article attempts to shed more light on these issues through an empirical investigation in a university-based introductory programming course with approx. 900 students. In the evaluation, this paper empirically investigates the effects of reviewing other solutions on the view of one's own solution and how students can be motivated to regularly work on voluntary homework assignments. Furthermore, there is an analysis of the peer reviews regarding their quality (length and correctness), and the students' participation and perceptions. The results indicate that giving feedback can change the view on one's own submission regarding the complete correctness, the majority of feedback is rather short, peer review assignments are a major driver for working on the assignments, and the majority of students like seeing other solutions. The majority of students seems to be able to identify correct submissions as correct, however, (partly) incorrect submissions are also often classified as completely correct. Possible measures to address these weaknesses are discussed.