  Peer review is a widely utilized feedback mechanism for engaging students. As
a pedagogical method, it has been shown to improve educational outcomes, but we
have found limited empirical measurement of peer review in visualization
courses. In addition to increasing engagement, peer review provides diverse
feedback and reinforces recently-learned course concepts through critical
evaluation of others' work. We discuss the construction and application of peer
review in two visualization courses from different colleges at the University
of South Florida. We then analyze student projects and peer review text via
sentiment analysis to infer insights for visualization educators, including the
focus of course content, engagement across student groups, student mastery of
concepts, course trends over time, and expert intervention effectiveness.
Finally, we provide suggestions for adapting peer review to other visualization
courses to engage students and increase instructor understanding of the peer
review process.
