Peer reviews - this is complicated!

[jmerriam]

I'm teaching public speaking (online), and all students are required to film & submit their speech videos through a specific Canvas Discussion Board; I view their speech and grade it in SpeedGrader. So far, so good.

The glitch comes because I also want each student to do a Peer Review of 4 different speeches throughout the semester; each review is worth 20 points. They are to post their reviews as a link to a form (see below) under their chosen speaker's video on the DB.

I have 2 problems: first, I have Assignments set up for Peer Review #1 - #4, but can't figure a way for SpeedGrader to automatically grade each review...I have to do it manually by scrolling through the DB looking for their reviews, and that's incredibly time-consuming.

Second, I have my own review form that I like to use; I thought about clicking "Require Peer Review" on the speech DB, but it looks like Canvas can only process rubrics in the format that it uses.

I may be making more work for myself than I need to, but at this point my brain is both fried and scrambled, and for the life of me I can't figure a way to do everything I want to do! Can anyone help?? Or maybe someone has a better way!

[waaaseee]

It seems half your activity is clicking around things, and that's making you frustrated! Probably a stupid question, but I'm just trying to help, do you get a text of the speeches on SpeedGrader to grade with? Also, you mentioned a link to a form but I don't see it below.

[jmerriam]

Not a stupid question at all! No, there's no written text of the students' speeches...all I have are their recorded videos, posted on the Discussion Board.

I'd intended to attach my form, but guess it didn't go through. Let me try it again.

[waaaseee]

I'm glad you didn't find it stupid! And is my assumption correct that the videos are self-hosted on YouTube or something? On that note, do you only need to grade the content (text only) or also the student's tone, delivery etc?

[waaaseee]

Alright, I just saw, your peers have to grade the visual and audio delivery as well. I think the problem is that speedgrader and DB are not designed for your use-case and more for text-based stuff. Did you try using pages? You can create one page per Peer Review, and have the students repost the video they selected and add their feedback underneath?

[nsweeten]

You may have this all figured out by now, but just in case...

My suggestion is to revisit some of the structures you committed to early.

Consider learning to use the Rubric tool in Canvas and make it your friend. I recommend that you write everything first in a WordDoc and get the wording perfected.  Also go high-to-low on ratings regardless of your preference in the past because fighting the tool will exhaust you and trying to compose in a tiny box is a lot harder than copy/paste.

Possible Solution

Leverage the Discussion Tool.  

• Have each student post their initial assignments for all to see. 
• Students can self-sort and "claim" 4 other students' to review by replying with their name. 
  • If your goal is anonymity--since the reviewer usually learns more than the reviewed student-- you can have those same student submit their reviews to you directly in a second assignment. 
  • If you want students to share their reviews publicly, be sure to provide strong guidelines for communication and examples of acceptable work.
  • If you want to take the burden of sorting names yourself, you can post a list.

The biggest question of whether or not to use the Peer Review tool or the Discussions tool is "How private and anonymous do the reviews need to be?" 

If you are expecting scholarly detail, supply a clear templated WordDoc your reviewers can download, fill out, and resubmit as an Assignment to save errors and confusion.  

P.s.  I've used the Peer review tool and like it, but it is indeed complicated and, respectfully,  you would want to use it for assignments that bend more naturally to its programming--not the other way around. 

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