Support for Peer Review Coming Soon to Assignment Enhancements

[jsailor]

Over the past several months, a team of our Canvas engineers has been working to provide access to peer review assignments in the enhanced assignment view instead of reverting back to the classic view. We are pleased to announce that this feature will be made available in production on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. 

Just like most things with this project (and true to its name), we've enhanced the student experience to make it more intuitive and to better ensure successful outcomes. First, we've made it easier for students to see when they have peer reviews to complete by showing them under the assignment for which they are required on both the assignment index page and in modules. 

Module view of assignments, including two peer reviews.

Peer reviews that are not yet available are easily identified from the module and assignment view as shown in the image above for Required Peer Review 2. If, however, a student still attempts to open the unavailable peer review, they are met with clear communication to know that it is not yet ready and asked to come back to the review a bit later. 

Unavailable peer review with message to check back soon.

Also, throughout the peer review process, the student is met with helpful reminders of what to do, such as submit their own assignment first or to complete the rubric in order to complete the peer review. In addition, there are a series of modals that will help the student through the process and let them know when they have successfully completed their required peer reviews. 

Modal to guide student and clearly communicate peer review progress.

We thank all who gave feedback on these designs before development started and also during the process. We look forward to hearing from those in this user group as we release this new, enhanced functionality that will improve success rates for completion of peer reviews given more visibility into the expectations and process. 

[SarahBushman]

This update would be amazing to the peer review functionality in Canvas. I have experienced designing this in many way to try and work around the hiccups that happen. 

[kmallen]

@jsailorIs this active? We have assignment enhancements turned on, but I'm not seeing the module view like you showed above.

[LauraCira]

This is a great step forward! The additional listing and screen reminders will help students with their next steps.

However, we really need enable a two due date format for peer reviews in order for this process to meaningfully work for busy students who don't have the bandwidth to keep checking back for a paper to review. Right now, they only see a single due date, that of the entire assignment cycle.

In essence, each peer review assignment has two due dates: (1) for the student's individual paper submission and (2) of course, for their work reviewing another paper. 

The instructor should be able to assign the original paper submission date separately, then assign the due date to complete the peer reviews. Both of these due dates need to display in the Assignments list, on their calendars, and in their To Do list. As it is now, they only see the final due date for the entire cycle, and this does not give them a meaningful goal to meet for their individual paper.

What may also help is a notification alert for students once an assignment has been submitted for them to review. 

Current due date display to students gives them no goal for their original paper submission:

[kmallen]

Per Canvas Support (thanks, Jeff!), this feature needs to be turned on by your CSM.

[snugent]

I have a few concerns with the new peer review process. 

First on the assignment peer review, when students view the individual assignment page there is no indication that there is a peer review to complete. If an instructor hides the assignment  page and doesn't use modules, how will student know to complete a peer review? 

Second issue is when the student is completing the peer review, the rubric displays at the top and submitted paper at the bottom. This will require the student to scroll up and down a lot. I would prefer the student be able see the rubric side by side the submitted paper (like in SpeedGrader).

[RobDitto]

Thanks, @kmallen, I was able to work with our institution's CSM team to get a chance to try out the feature.  I like that it improves discoverability of assigned peer reviews for students and hope that it will eventually communicate deadlines as @LauraCira and @snugent also suggested.

Unfortunately I'm also seeing evidence in this new feature that there's been an uncommunicated change to how peer review works, overall, in Canvas.  For many years, our teachers have used the capability of How do I manually assign peer reviews for an assignment? mentioned in the first bullet point of that guide's Notes. I'll copy it here in case it gets revised away:

• When manually assigning peer reviews, students can complete their assigned peer reviews without having to submit their own assignment first.

This isn't possible anymore as of a few weeks ago; our support case about that, 09636446, remains On Hold as of this comment's initial posting. However, that new change is reflected in on-screen help for Assignment Enhancements peer review support:

@jsailor, is there anything Canvas Product can share about why that on-screen help is there and whether it confirms a removal of a previously supported/documented workflow for peer review?

[b_w_reid]

Hi, in addition to, or following on from other peoples comments, we recently took a good look at the new enhancements and have a couple of issues with the new feature:

Reviewing Peer work Message 

 When a student access the space to assess other students work, the following message is displayed:  

“Details: Please submit your work here and then review your peers work.”  

This message doesn’t make sense, as the student has already submitted their own work. Can the wording be changed to “Please review your peers work”. 

Timely Peer Review 

How does the tutor know when students have finished peer reviewing? It would be useful if the student reviewing work could have a submit button so that the tutors know whether the student has finished their review. There are some similar requests in comments by other users. Tutors risk marking the reviewer when they haven’t finished marking.  

Guidance to help students peer review 

There’s a lack of guidance for students when they complete a review. What’ the students next steps? Should they use a rubric? Should they annotate on the work or just add comments? Is it up to the student? This information could be added to the initial assignment, but it would be useful if there was an area that provided specific guidance to reviewers when they are reviewing. 

Tutors View of a students submission has not changed 

When a tutor accesses the students submission from the peer review window, the old assignment window loads: 

Reviewing Reviewers 

Part of the peer review process can be awarding marks to the quality of the review. There aren’t any processes for this inside Canvas. 

[kailey]

Hi @jsailor. It's been over two years since AE Peer Reviews was released, so I hoped bugs and issues would have been ironed out by now. Unfortunately, I found that not to be the case. In addition to Peer Review concerns below, there are a number of other AE issues and bugs, but I'll post that in a more appropriate place.

Access Denied Peer Review To-Do Link

Peer review tasks are immediately added to student Dashboard and Course Homepage To Do lists, even when they’re inaccessible. If a student has not yet submitted the assignment, the link leads to an unhelpful Access Denied error.

However, if the student accesses the peer review link from Assignments prior to submitting first, the page provides helpful details.
 

Are there any plans for Instructure to point the link from To Do to the same helpful Assignment Enhancements page above? A bonus is if To Do lists do not display Peer Review tasks until a submission has been made. 

Peer Review Link: Classic UI

Clicking available peer review To Do tasks from the Dashboard or Course Homepage lead to the classic peer review UI, rather than the new Assignment Enhancements UI.

Assignment Statuses

Students would benefit from additional statuses that more accurately reflect the true progression of the assignment journey. Currently, there are just two statuses, NEXT UP: Submit Assignment and NEXT UP: Review Feedback. These statuses don’t always accurately reflect the actual next step. For instance, a status labelled NEXT UP: Peer Reviews would be helpful for students to know there's a peer review step. Also, NEXT UP: Await Instructor Grades would be beneficial for the period between submission and feedback availability. The status should change to Review Feedback only after grades and comments are posted.

Loss of Breadcrumbs

While viewing an assigned Peer Review, there’s no easy way to navigate back to the main assignment. Classic Assignments includes a breadcrumb link, allowing easy access back to the main assignment. Are there any plans to reintroduce this with Assignment Enhancements or will this be an unfortunate change in behavior with AE?

Thanks for considering!

[SamGarza1]

Hi @kailey,

Thank you for sharing this feedback with us. I've created tickets for the student peer review link issue and available peer reviews linking to the legacy UI. They should show on the known issues list soon. 

For the assignment statuses and loss of breadcrumbs we're looking further into these issues and how the overall design will need to change to create a better experience for students. 

In general, our team has prioritized peer review and we're beginning early development on some improvements. While our focus is more on the teacher experience, issues like the ones you've mentioned above are unacceptable in the student experience.