Once student work becomes public, whether to the cohort of the world doesn't really matter, forms of peer critique become easier. Peer critique achieves several things:

• provides students with a critical language to critique their own, and others practice and work
• provides a language by which to judge their work
• generates a structure that they can apply to other contexts
• teaches skills that are applicable outside of the individual course or program
• separates out the personal (and personalities) from critique

There are lots of ways to undertake structured critiques. The key thing is probably to realise that if you are going to undertake a critique then it must be clearly structured so that students know what their role is. De Bono's coloured hats critique is a simple structure to use. Students can either be one 'hat' at a time and rotate through the colours, or can work in groups. Similarly a SWOT analysis can also be effective. The key point is to model for the students how to undertake the critique, holding them to task as they learn how to do it, and remember that for students who do not come from a design background this is novel, so you need to be clear for yourself why they should do this and what the benefits are.

In my case my rationale runs something like this. We expect you to be critical thinkers and makers. At school and university you tend to rely on your teachers to tell you if something is good, good enough, or not. Once you graduate who is going to tell you if your work is good enough? You're supposed to know this, but how would you learn this if you're not taught the methods or tools 

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