Assessing the Impact of Pen-Based Computing on Students´ Peer Review Strategies: Results from the Technical Communication Classroom

This paper provides a report on a project investigating the impact of pen-based computing on students´ peer review strategies. The context for the project is an introductory technical communication course for engineering students from multiple disciplines. The project investigators created three peer reviewing contexts in which to assess the impact of tablet PCs on the quantity and quality of students´ peer review comments. A comment inventory form was then developed that allowed the investigators to categorize each comment based on comment location, content, and form. Initial observations from the inventory work are presented