Do Numeric Ratings Impact Peer Reviewers?

Research suggests that online peer review can provide critical help to learners who would otherwise not be given individualized feedback on their work. However, little is known about how different characteristics of review systems impact reviewers. This extended abstract presents preliminary results from an online experiment examining how explicit numeric ratings change peer reviews. A between-subject experiment found that peer reviewers who were asked to generate a numeric rating as well as general feedback gave significantly more explanations and made more positive comments compared with reviewers who were asked to give general feedback only. These exploratory findings suggest the need to further examine how online peer review systems' affordances can impact the reviews given in these systems.