A Warm Thank You to our “Blind” Peer Reviewers

We had almost 90 different proposals submitted for K12 Online 2007; 36 were selected for the conference. We wanted to ensure that every proposal had a fair chance of being selected for the conference. This is how we did it “¦

Each convener found 3 or 4 volunteers who were educators to act as peer reviewers in their strand. With the close date for submissions, each convener sent the peer review committee members a summary of the proposals that had been submitted for that strand. Each convener organized this a little differently. In some cases the committees knew the other reviewers for their strand, in other cases they didn’t. The peer reviewers, based on the titles and abstracts submitted, chose the best 9 proposals in their strand. In most cases this was a very difficult task.

We structured the process this way in order to avoid both the appearance and possibility of bias by making the selections ourselves. We chose educators who were diverse in terms of their teaching subjects, levels and geography.

How do you properly thank people who agreed to be blind reviewers for K12 Online 2007 whose identities for obvious reasons are not published? We wanted to publicly thank you. You know who you are”¦ thank you; without you this conference would never happen. Your role is an integral part of K12 Online and we are most grateful.