[Peer Review] Assigning Grades for Peer Reviews

[kdemello]

Part of participating in online coursework involves working with other students to improve drafts and engage in the learning community. When students are assigned peer reviews, let's be honest, they aren't motivated to complete it unless there is a grade attached. I would love the ability to grade peer reviews.

This could be as simple as complete/incomplete, or more complex where the completion of peer reviews was part of a grading rubric for the assignment. But it would be nice if there was something in the grade book, some academic weight given to participating in these reviews, that doesn't involve manually looking up peer reviews outside of the grade book.

[barclay_brown]

Perhaps it's obvious but one thing I left out above is the result. A "grading assignment" as I describe above, would pretty obviously record a grade for the target student or group, that would show up in the gradebook. I think it's fair to just let the instructor figure out how that peer grade would be averaged into the student's final grade.

But a "grading assignment" could also itself be graded, that is, the instructor could come back later and grade the grading assignment--how well did the student do the grading of the other student? That grade would be recorded just like the grade for any assignment, in the grade book for the grading student.

By having options for graded or ungraded, both for the grading and graded student, this would seem to cover all kinds of peer review, peer grading, and even the "rate your fellow group members on their contribution to the group". Hmm, to accomplish this last one, I suppose we need a few more option for the selecting graded student, that of grading all students in my group, all students in the class, or perhaps multiple, manually selected students.

[kmatson]

We like the Peer Review tool but find it missing a few functionalities.

1. Faculty would like to grade the peer review itself - could you add a box to check to grade the peer review that would add a place holder assignment to grade the peer review in?

2. Faculty would like a due date for the peer review. You have a start date, can you add a due date?

3. Faculty add a rubric for the assignment. Canvas forces the student doing the peer review to use/touch that rubric. Why? It was for the original assignment so students knew how they were to be graded, it is not for the peer review so why are the peer reviewers having to touch or use it. If we have the ability to add a second rubric to actually use in the peer review process that would be better. My work around now is to have the faculty member add a second part to the rubric that handles the peer review.

Thank you,

Karen Matson

[scain]

To piggyback on this idea, it would be very beneficial to have all the peer review comments that a student left on other papers collected in SpeedGrader so that you could grade that person's draft as well as the quality of feedback that they left on their peers' papers.

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

[harpere]

This feature is very important for the courses I teach. My students complete several peer review assignments. The issues I have with the peer reviews are these:

• Does not create an assignment column in Grades for me to grade the quality of the peer review. I need students to be able to submit a draft for review. Have students review each other's draft and leave feedback. Then I need to be able to grade the feedback that the reviewer left as a separate assignment. However, I would like it to remain that writer see the reviewer's comment when he/she clicks on the draft assignment. 
• I cannot assign a due date to the peer review assignment.
• It would be nice to use a different rubric for each assignment - rough draft, quality of peer review rubric, and final draft.
• Whenever I use Speedgrader to view what students have submitted and the feedback the student's reviewer(s) gave, if I want to grade the students draft or add comments using the rubric, I have to change, remove the student reviewer's  feedback. The rubrics should be set up for the original or rough draft so that both the reviewer(s) and the instructor can use the same rubric to provide feedback without overwriting each other. If 5 people review a students writing, then that student should see 5 different rubrics (or at least 2 - one from the peer review and on from the instructor review.

Having these Peer Review features available in Canvas would definitely make the peer review experience easier, less confusing, with fewer steps, for both instructors and students.

Thank you,

EH

[stucker]

This needs to be done sooner rather than later: the platform is useless to online grading of writing and peer review, if we cannot actually grade the PR critiques. That is where students learn most. It is also useless if I cannot let groups auto-select who they will PR for the week.  Students should have this power so that they can correctly identify which of the 2 group members (out of 8-10) they will be critiquing that week.

Personally, I won't be using Canvas going forward until it is fixed--Speedgrader is weak compared to TI PeerMark and GradeMark--and as a member of the committee, I won't be recommending Canvas for future use at our university.

[kmatson]

Seth,

We do need to be able to grade peer review. We also need groups to work and allow groups to review groups. I keep asking them to fix groups too.

Karen

[koop]

Seth and Karen, I second your thoughts on the urgency of this issue.

I teach in a unit where I am the only online instructor. I frequently lobby to have additional online courses added to the curriculum, but the relative inability to assess peer feedback has made ease of student interactivity difficult to sell. If I lack the ability to assess mandatory feedback, students lack the incentive to critically assess one another. 

I am seeking to create a learning community that can

1. teach students to be accountable for their learning and their classmates' learning;
2. let administrators know that this is truly possible in an online setting;
3. sell the idea to other faculty members that may be resistant to teaching online due to perceived difficulty of interactivity.

[daniel_clark]

I see Canvas respond at the top of this thread is from 2015!!!  

It's three years later.  I just started using Canvas and the lack of a simple peer review process after all this time strikes me as almost a deal breaker.  There may be complexities, but a simple step is to create a double deadline structure, each of which can be evaluated by the instructor if he or she chooses.  All it requires is that you add a deadline option to the current peer review setup, and make sure the instructor can easily access those peer reviews.  (I assume there is already a way to look at peer reviews, which is what I'm trying to figure out right now!) 

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.