[Peer Review] Assigning Grades for Peer Reviews

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.

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90 Comments
Steven_S
Community Champion

While your own students may not benefit from graded peer reviews, every class is not identical.  A few extra credit points for a complete review (measured automatically by the computer as a complete rubric plus one comment) goes a long way towards getting students to participate in that cooperative learning environment.  Without such an incentive far fewer students participate, which significantly weakens the cooperative learning environment.  This idea offers a way to make that grade incentive (which many of us are already working hard to provide) easier to accomplish.  It does not require everyone to grade peer reviews that they do not already grade in some way.

browning339l
Community Contributor

I would even like to see the addition of a "quality" of peer review grade option.  That is allow the anonymous reviewee to grade the anonymous reviewer on the quality of the peer review.  I see a very wide range of really good peer reviews that help the student with their writing to essentially just "giving" a grade which is no help at all.

Steven_S
Community Champion

A closely related idea, would allow instructors to easily add points to the original assignment grade using evidence of a completed peer review: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15895-display-peer-review-status-in-speedgrader 

Steven_S
Community Champion
bunnella
Community Member

I agree with many of the other instructors. Students are not motivated to complete a task unless they get credit - peer reviews need to be added to the grade book! This will also allow me to send reminders easily. I realize that it can be done on the peer review page BUT I have 200+ students in one section (and I typically teach 2 sections a semester). It is onerous to manually remind students who haven't done their peer reviews and to manually post to the gradebook that they have completed them. I had to screenshot about 17 times to record who had completed the peer review and THEN manually post in the gradebook. This is time consuming and we are all short on time.

Also, I support the idea of having a peer review due date. And it would be great to have 2 due dates for one assignment. One for the draft and one for the final version after peer review and editing.

This is the first time I have used peer review and I may have to drop it.

Thanks for considering these changes.

 

cmarti11
Community Member

I absolutely agree. It's so tedious to manually add Peer Reviews to the Grades. As a result, I'm not planning to use this tool in my classes this quarter. It's frustrating that Canvas doesn't fix this problem.

ewh10
Community Member

It's been 5 years since this was first suggested.  Is it even on the roadmap at this point?

ctr_amachsonca
Community Explorer

this is a key feature that Canvas should have. How do I vote for it? 

RobDitto
Community Champion

@ctr_amachsonca, if you're logged into the Canvas Community, then you can click on the stars shown above the idea description (under the "Status" line) to give a rating.  Star rating is the new voting in this version of the relaunched Community's Idea Exchange.

jessica_wells17
Community Member

Apologies if this work around had been discussed already - 

 

Using 2 assignments might be a great option for being able to grade peer reviews. Being able to give quality feedback is essential in a professional setting. Students need to be taught how to do this. In the original assignment, go ahead and set up the peer review. This creates the ability for students to be automatically assigned peer reviews, and the ability to return their review to the student author. Next, set up a second assignment. Provide a rubric for completing the peer review, instructions for accessing the peer portion of the original assignment, and instructions for returning the peer review to the original author. Then, instruct students to upload their peer review to both locations. Now, the original student can access the feedback from the orfinial assignment, but the instructor also has the ability to grade the peer review submission and provide extensive feedback. 

TLDR:
1.) Create original assignment with peer review.

2.) Create second assignment to submit peer reviews.

3.) Give rubric for conducting a peer review, and instructions for accessing/returning peer review in original assignment, AND instruct students to upload to the peer review assignment.

4.) Grade peer review