When in 2022 UNSW and the journal Teaching and Learning Inquiry jointly launched their pilot Peer Review of Journals Mentoring Program (as profiled in this article), its participants knew they’d be learning valuable skills that would both support their own research and help them contribute to the wider research community, particularly in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The program, for which Associate Professsor Karin Watson won the 2024 Gary Poole Distinguished Reviewer Award, is presented annually at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference (ISSOTL). It offers participants the opportunity to learn and practice both the techniques involved in effective peer-reviewing and collaborative approaches to reviewing research in their own and other fields. Some of the academics who participated in that pilot program have reflected on what benefits they achieved, and the opportunties that their new peer-reviewing skills have given them.
The power of collaboration
Lecturer Dr Gee Cong Ling (UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences) spoke of benefiting from “the power as a group” to peer-review research, saying that conducting peer review with colleagues “makes the process a whole lot easier than navigating the ‘unknown’ on my own. The impact of the program is an immense asset to boost one’s confidence.” Similarly, Senior Lecturer Dr Jess Macer-Wright (UNSW School of Clinical Medicine), commented,
“The most surprising aspect of the program was how seamlessly our group came together, combining different experiences and expertise to review manuscripts effectively. I discovered the power of collaborative learning, gaining insights not just from the review process, but from my fellow participants' unique approaches and viewpoints.”
Nexus Fellow Dr Benjamin Phipps (UNSW Pro Vice-Chancellor Education Portfolio), who has since become a peer-review mentor himself, also found the collaborative aspect of the program highly useful. “My initial involvement with the program early on as a participant gave me the chance to collaborate with other reviewers and benchmark my expectations and judgement against some more experienced colleagues who had valuable insights and talk through their thinking. It was also helpful reorienting from being an experienced reviewer in another discipline (ethnomusicology/musicology) to reviewing in SoTL publications, which is significantly different.”
Gaining cross-disciplinary skills
Senior Lecturer Dr George Joukhadar (UNSW Information Systems and Technology Management) spoke of some specific skills he learned from his participation: “The program has strengthened my ability to critically assess educational research, building on my prior experience with discipline-specific articles. It also deepened my understanding of evidence-based teaching practices.” He added, “I am now applying these skills with greater confidence in critically reviewing both discipline-specific and SoTL articles. I pay closer attention to the emotional aspects of the feedback I provide.”
Dr Neda Chepinchikj (USNW Pro Vice-Chancellor Education Portfolio) undertook the program because she wanted to broaden her experience in and understanding of academic publishing more generally. “I jumped at the opportunity. I do consider myself to be a researcher, and although research is not part of my current position, I try to do as much as I can. A couple of years ago I started doing a bit of peer academic reviewing in my discipline (I’m an applied linguist). I thought that [the course] would be a lovely opportunity; it would be a good thing for me to try to be on the other side of the publishing cycle...and build my skill set.”
Catalyst for new initiatives
A number of participants also talked about how they’re moving forward with the skills and insights they gained from the program. Gee Chong Lin said, “[I’m working on] establishing an educational research project within the School with other EF academics whilst reflecting on the process of the group peer review, which helps with identifying things that we should and should not do in our journey. In addition, I am currently engaging in a cross-institution collaboration where I continue to exploit the collective effort along the journey.” Jess Macer-Wright highlighted that learning about peer-reviewing has inspired her to expand her own research activity:
“I am applying these skills directly by beginning to write papers for SoTL journals, having gained a deeper understanding of journal expectations and review processes.”
Building confidence as a mentor/Mentor opportunities
As noted above, Benjamin Phipps has broadened his involvement in the program to become a mentor. He pointed out ways that participating in greater depth has strengthened all aspects of his scholarship and research: “Having had the chance to now mentor several cohorts of reviewers as part of the TLI program and give structure and guidance to their experiences has been invaluable in helping me articulate and prioritise the most important parts of reviewing and embracing a developmental review ethos. Developmental reviews are so much more helpful as an author, but it also feels much more fulfilling to write to a colleague and play a role, however small, in building a sense of ethics amongst researchers regardless of discipline. Getting to, in a sense, teach peer-review has really built my confidence in my own feedback as a reviewer and in critiquing my own writing for publications.”
Looking to the 2025 cohort
Associate Professor Karin Watson , who pioneered and leads the program, said that to better accommodate the widely varying schedules of busy academics, the program has been redesigned so that in upcoming iterations the first two or three “how to” workshops will be delivered synchronously, after which participants opt into the collaboration, shadowing and mentoring processes asynchronously as their schedules permit. She said, “We will be asking for expressions of interest in February or March for the next group of participants to start. We’re also planning to open participation up to other institutions.”
For more information on the program, please contact Karin Watson. For more information on joining the 2025 cohort, please contact Ben Phipps.