In large-and-small classes there are times where I want students to either ALWAYS be peer-reviewing the work of certain students, or NEVER peer review the work of certain students. While the functionality to group students is already there, the desired cross-talk with the peer-review tools does not exist.
Example 1: Intra-group peer reviews. I have students divided into working groups selected by topic. An assignment requires peer review, but I want students to peer review ONLY within their group (topic). As it currently stands, I must arduously, manually select each peer review by hand.
Example 2: Inter-group peer reviews. Students are in their same groups as above (separated by topic). For a new assignment, I want peer reviews to provide an outside perspective. Thus, I want peer reviews to happen between groups such that students NEVER receive a peer review from within their group.
My proposed solution is simply to allow the peer review utility (per assignment) to assign X number of peer reviews from completely random students (a current option), from within student groups, or from without student groups. This will greatly reduce the amount of time assigning peer reviews or fixing peer reviews that end up randomly assigning students peers that they should not be reviewing. This increased flexibility will help with assignment design.
