Peer Review - can students reply to posts made by their student peer-reviewers?

GeogShark
Community Explorer

I think I'm pushing the boundaries of what the "peer review" function on Discussions can do.

I have assigned students to post to two students in class as peer review.  I then instructed each student to respond to their peer reviewers.  I'm uncertain why this works sometimes and others it doesn't.

I suspect some students go back to the discussion board and hit "reply" if their peer reviewer posted as a reply to them there.  If the peer reviewer uses the "Comments" area to reply (which I think is the way Canvas intends for peer review to happen), I suspect the original student can see the posts by their peer reviewers there (on the assignment, not the discussion board) but is prevented from replying to the peer reviewer inside "Comments." 

Do I have this correct?  Is there any easier way to achieve student interaction using peer review?