Peer review – a practice regularly used for review of scholarly work – is also a valuable classroom assessment tool. The first benefit of peer review in classroom assessment is that students receive additional feedback on their work that may be too time intensive for the instructor to produce themselves. While successful peer review does require time and instructor engagement (see below), it does provide some efficiencies, particularly for larger classes.

A second benefit of peer review is that it requires students to carefully consider expectations for the assignment and offers an opportunity for students to see how another student is addressing those expectations. Deeper understanding of these expectations may be helpful to students as they seek to improve their own work.

The third benefit of peer review is that it helps students learn to provide effective feedback to others. This skill is critical in many professional, academic, and personal settings. For instance, on a personal level, importance of this skill is validated when I remind my 4th grade son for the 4,583rd time to lean over the table when eating his dinner so his food does not fall on the floor (although the dog does not seem to mind).

Unfortunately, using peer review for classroom assessment is not something that can just be dropped into a class without some preparation. Christina Moore, in an excellent blog post on Faculty Focus, described the importance of preparing students in advance for peer review both as the givers and receivers of feedback. For receivers of feedback, Moore has her students create a brief memo that is shared with the reviewer, in addition to the work itself, where the student provides some context about the material being reviewed (such as, “I still need to wrap-up the ending”) and identifies areas where they want the reviewer to direct their attention (such as, “does my writing flow?”). For the givers of feedback, Moore emphasizes the importance of holding students accountable for providing useful feedback as a peer reviewer, for following the rubric, and for following directions for peer review. She grades her peer reviewers on “whether they have answered all memo points, followed peer review best practices as you lay them out in the directions, and accurately evaluated work based on class content and rubrics.”

Using peer review in courses used to require collecting, shuffling, redistributing, and tracking vast amounts of paper. Now, ICON – the University of Iowa’s implementation of the Canvas web-based learning management system – offers instructors numerous tools for peer review and other types of classroom assessment. Recorded videos and live training opportunities for ICON are available on the ITS website. Directions for creating a peer review assignment in ICON (Canvas) are available from the Canvas Community site. With these technology tools and some preparation, peer review can be a valuable assessment and learning tool in your course.

Simon Sinek, in his book “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”, promotes the idea that, whether it is a simple purchase like buying pants, or a significant decision, like or selecting where to go to college, people “don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” For instance, many customers of Patagonia (a clothing and outdoor gear company) choose the company and have loyalty to it not because they make expensive pants, but because they support Patagonia’s mission to “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Vision statements serve similar roles as mission statements, but rather than emphasizing what we do and why we exist, vision statements explain what we pursue or want to see in the future. One of the most well-known vision statements of the 1990s was Microsoft’s vision for “A computer on every desk and in every home.” (Perhaps they would be an even wealthier company if that vision had included “a computer in every pocket”!)

Recent research suggests consumers and students are increasingly making decisions based on the extent to which the mission and values of an organization align with what is important to them personally (e.g. The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Sales: An Accountability Perspective ). A 2021 study by Buell and Kalkanci found support for the view that “consumers take companies’ responsibility efforts into account in their decision making” and identified benefits for being transparent about efforts around internal and external responsibility initiatives (such as paying suppliers a living wage or taking steps to reduce environmental harm). Mission and vision statements provide an opportunity to express what an organization seeks to achieve and what future they desire and provides an opportunity to communicate this with external stakeholders.

In addition to communicating what an organization is about and why it exists to external stakeholders, mission and vision statements are important for guiding internal organizational decisions, for recruiting, hiring, and developing faculty and staff, for developing organizational strategy, and for determining whether we are successful.

Good mission statements are original, foundational, memorable, concise, and would be something you would voluntarily wear on a t-shirt. Similarly, good vision statements are inspirational, powerful, concise, and describe what will change for the better as the result of our work. Below are some examples of various mission and vision statements (of various levels of quality):

Sample Mission Statements

• Tesla: “Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
• Greater Baltimore Medical Center: “To every patient, every time, we will provide the care that we would want for our own loved ones.”
• University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education: “Improve Lives / Change the World / Redefine What’s Possible.”

Sample Vision Statements

• Feeding America: “A hunger-free America.”
• Habitat for Humanity: “A world where everyone has a decent place to live.”
• University of Denver Morgridge College of Education: “Be a global leader in innovative and effective approaches for promoting learning throughout the lifespan.”

This fall the College begins a process for updating our mission, vision, and values statements. Throughout the process we will offer numerous opportunities for engagement and participation across the College and look forward to engaging discussions about who we are, why we exist, and what we hope to see in the future. For more information about this work, please email Jeremy Penn (Jeremy-penn@uiowa.edu).