I use workshop groups in all of my creative writing courses and the students review each other’s drafts on a rotating basis - for example, a group of 8 students will review 1-2 students drafts per class period, and the group has a set schedule of whose pieces are due for any given class date. But the Peer Review function that does not allow students to complete peer reviews until they’ve turned in their own draft makes this impossible. I understand from someone I spoke with at Canvas that this is about preventing plagiarism, but for a creative writing workshop, this doesn’t apply in the same way, and it would be so helpful for the instructor to have the option of allowing students to access drafts for peer review at any time. One of the solutions Canvas suggested was to use the discussion board for peer review groups, which is how I managed this when my university was on Blackboard, but this is actually one of the things that often lead to students echoing each other’s peer review comments instead of evaluating the piece entirely on their own.
Instructors should have the ability to set Peer Review to be available at any time in cases where students are submitting work on any kind of rotating basis. Almost all creative writing classes use some form of peer review and do so on this rotating schedule (and I'm sure this happens in other disciplines as well), and being able to use the peer review function for this would make so much of the coordination of these assignments easier.
