Peer Reviewer Training (PERT) Program

The Peer Reviewer Training (PERT) project aimed to improve the inclusivity and diversity of the engineering education research (EER) community by training emerging scholars to provide constructive reviews of EER scholarship. The main goal was to create an environment that values various perspectives and minimizes the perception of peer review as a barrier or gatekeeping activity. The project focused on supporting "lone wolf" EER scholars who lack easy access to a supportive community for developing their reviewing and research skills.

The approach involved creating pools of qualified reviewers through mentorship and training opportunities. The mentored reviewing model developed in this project could be applied to other disciplines and graduate programs aiming to mentor new and emerging members of their professional communities. The PERT project was supported in part through a grant from the National Science Foundation, “Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training” (award numbers 2037807, 2037788 and 2037797).