Using Calibrated Peer Review to Teach Basic Research Skills.

This presentation describes a faculty-librarian partnership using a new technology to successfully incorporate critical thinking, writing, and basic research skills into a mandatory course for all incoming freshman in the College of Agriculture.  Introducing students to all the skills needed to be productive researchers is difficult in already full curricula. Additionally, large classroom settings challenge instructors to be innovative in designing effective and scalable assignments.  Calibrated Peer Review ™ (CPR™) is an online system created at UCLA supported within Blackboard that allows students to complete assignments online and be assigned peer assignments (randomly and anonymously) to review.  By using CPR™ , the instructors were able to have students complete a series of assignments that introduced them to a research skill (evaluation of articles) and required them to think critically (description of evaluation of 2 articles and how they could apply this knowledge in the future) and expressed through written essays and peer-review.