Design Challenge Solution: Peer Review

While there are many strategies that could be used to address the design challenge above, here we will talk about Peer Review.

What is a peer review?

Peer assessment or peer review provides a structured learning process for students to critique and provide feedback to each other on their work. It helps students develop lifelong skills in assessing and providing feedback to others, and also equips them with skills to self-assess and improve their own work.  [Source].

Peer review may be called by many names, e.g.,

• Peer review
• Peer assessment
• Peer evaluation
• Peer feedback

But in the end, this is an instructional strategy that can help students master the concepts of a course by learning from each other.

While there are many tools that could be used for peer review activities, and Canvas offers a couple of options.

Learn about peer reviews in Canvas

If you are wondering how Canvas can help you facilitate a peer review assignment or discussion, read on! Let’s start with some basic information.

A peer review assignment enables students to provide feedback on another student’s assignment submission. Peer reviews are a tool that allows communication between students and can help students master the concepts of a course and learn from each other. Peer reviews can be assigned to show student names or display anonymously.

• Canvas Guide: How do I use peer review assignments in a course?
• Canvas Guide: How do I use peer review discussions in a course?

Use Peer Review: Faculty Resources

Tips, Tricks, and Takeaways

• Only assignments using the “online” submission type can be peer-reviewed.
• Peer reviews can be assigned to students automatically or manually.
• Even if you select the option to automatically assign peer reviews, you will still need to manually click a button on the peer review screen in order to distribute the peer review assignments to the students.
• If you choose the option to make peer reviews anonymous, peer reviewers will not have the option to annotate the submission using Crocodoc.
• Due dates for peer reviews can be confusing for students. See the instructions in the “create a peer review” section of this page for more details.
• Grading: Students cannot automatically receive a grade for completing a peer review. If you want to assign points for completing peer reviews, you can create a separate “no submission” assignment in the Gradebook, and use it assign points manually.
• Grading: When you grade a student’s assignment using the SpeedGrader, all peer review comments from peer reviewers will appear in the comments sidebar and the rubric (if the assignment has a rubric). Crocodoc annotations from peer reviewers will also appear on screen in the SpeedGrader window.
• Due dates for peer reviews can be confusing for your students. To address this issue, follow the steps below when creating an assignment that will require peer reviews:

• • Create an assignment with a due date.
  • Select the option to require peer reviews and set them to be assigned automatically.
  • Choose the number of reviews to assign to each student.
  • Set the peer review due date for a date after the assignment due date (at least a week after the initial due date is preferred).
  • Wait until the assignment due date has passed.
  • After the assignment due date has passed, open the assignment’s peer reviews screen and click the “Automatically Assign Peer Reviews” ​button. Anyone who submitted an assignment will automatically be assigned a peer review, and the due date for submitting the peer review will appear on their dashboard.

Resources For Students

You’ll want to provide your students some guidance on how peer reviews will be used in your course. It’s also helpful to include links to how-to guides in advance. This will save students’ time and frustration.

Assignments

• How do I know if I have a peer review assignment to complete?
• How do I submit a peer review to an assignment?
• Where can I find my peers’ feedback for peer reviewed assignments?

Discussions

• How do I know if I have a peer review discussion to complete?
• How do I submit a peer review to a discussion?
• Where can I find my peers’ feedback for peer reviewed discussions?

Tips, Tricks, Workarounds

• If students have been assigned to complete a peer review, they will be able to access it from their dashboard.
• To complete a peer review, students must review the assignment and leave a comment on the submission details page.
• If the assignment includes a rubric, students must use the rubric before the peer review will be considered complete.
• If the peer review is anonymous, students will not have access to the document annotation tools in Canvas.
• We recommend providing the following text and/or video tutorials to your students to help them learn the necessary steps for completing and submitting a peer review:
  • Canvas Student Guide: How do I submit a peer review to an assignment? 
  • Canvas Video: Peer Reviews – students (4 mins)

Looking for other Peer Review tools?

In addition to Canvas, there are other technology tools that may be used to facilitate Peer Review. Below are a few options.

• Google forms
• Qualtrics survey