Hello everyone! We are glad to add a new feature to our product which will make the assessment engine even more powerful than before. As an instructor on Teamie, you can now create Peer Review assignments that require learners’ attempt to be reviewed by one or more of their peers, i.e other learners.
Peer reviewed assignments can provide a structured learning process that works well for learners. By giving each other feedback on the work they’ve done, it helps them identify gaps in their understanding or skill set and then work towards improving those. Feedback is vital for learners to improve their thinking and writing skills. By providing feedback and having their work assessed, they not only develop a lifelong ability to provide constructive criticism but also improve their own understanding of the subject they are studying. Therefore, peer reviewed assignments can prove to be a great learning tool.
Creating Peer Reviewed Assignments
As an instructor, you can create a new peer review assignment or turn an existing assignment into a peer review assignment by enabling the Require Peer Review sub-setting under the Grading settings of the assignment.
| 💡 The due date (deadline) is mandatory for an assignment to enable the Peer Review setting. Furthermore, you cannot enable group submissions for a peer reviewed assignment and vice versa. |
Once you enable the Require Peer Review setting, you can then allot learners for peer review either manually or automatically.
Manual Allotments
On the Peer Review Allotments screen, click the ‘Learners to Review’ column and select the required learner to be reviewed. By default, ‘1’ learner’s submission is assigned for each learner to review.
While selecting the learners, you will be able to see the count of learners that have already been allotted to review this learner. The color of the count will be green if it matches the required count (Number of reviews for each learner) and orange if the required count is lower or higher. This is done so that every learner would require the same number of reviewers for this to be an even split. But as an instructor, you can use your judgment if you want one particular learner’s attempt to be reviewed by more learners.
You can also increase the number of reviews for each learner to a maximum of ‘4’. Therefore, a learner can be assigned a maximum of 4 learners’ submissions to peer review.
Automatic Allotments
In order to automatically allot learners for peer review, click the Automatically Allot Reviewers button on the Peer Review Allotments screen. This will automatically fill up the table evenly with the learners of the classroom.
You can view or edit the peer review allotments anytime from the Peer Review Allotments link.
Peer Review Settings
As an instructor, you can update the peer review settings to change the date and time from when and till when the submissions should be available for the learners to peer review. You can also make the peer review process to be completely anonymous for both the learners making submissions and the learners who are peer reviewing the submissions. Let’s shed some light on these settings.
Peer review ‘Available From’ and ‘Review Deadline’
An assignment is available for the reviewers to peer review as per the ‘Review Available From‘ date and time. The peer review can start only after the assignment’s deadline and late submission period, if any. By default, this time is set to 2 minutes after the due date of the assignment (+ any late submission time).
The peer review submissions will be available for the reviewers till the ‘Review Deadline‘ which, by default, is set 3 days after the ‘Review Available From’ date and time. But as an instructor, you can change the Review available from / deadline as per your requirement.
Anonymous Peer Review
As an instructor, you can enable the anonymous peer review setting so that the peer review process is completely done anonymously at the learners end. This would mean that the reviewer will not know which learner(s) they are reviewing, and the reviewed learner will not know which of their peers reviewed their attempt.
While reviewing a submission, the anonymous learners will be labeled as ‘Learner‘ whereas while viewing the submission the anonymous reviewers will be labeled as ‘Reviewer‘.
Viewing Completed/Pending Peer Review Submissions
On the Submissions page, instructors can see the learner(s) that are allotted to be reviewed by other learners from the Peer Review column.
The Submissions table can be filtered to show only the learners who have completed the peer review of all the learners that were allotted to them. The green tick means the peer review has been completed for a learner. The peer review for a reviewer will be considered as completed only when the learner has reviewed all the learners’ submissions allotted to him/her.
The scores given by the reviewer for the learner’s attempt will be listed in the Peer Review section. In case a grade scheme is attached to the assignment, then the corresponding grades will also be listed along with any comments added by the reviewer(s).
In case a rubric is attached to the assignment, instructors will be able to see which learner has selected which scale for a criterion. They can grade the rubric irrespective of reviewers selections.
Click here to learn more about how to create and manage peer reviewed assignments.
Learners’ Peer Reviewing Assignments
When the peer review for an assignment is open for learners, they receive a notification which takes them directly to the learner attempt(s) that they need to peer review.
Learners can also access the peer review attempt(s) by clicking the Peer Review button from an assignment’s expanded or collapsed view.
A calendar event is also created for peer review which can be accessed from the ToDos or the full calendar view.
On the Attempts page, the learner’s attempt that is considered for grading (by default the latest attempt) will be shown for peer review. If anonymous peer review is enabled, the name of the learner whose submission is being reviewed will not be shown and just a generic label ‘Learner’ will be shown instead.
The reviewer (reviewing learner) can then go through the allotted learner’s attempt as per the assignment’s submissions settings. Once done, the reviewer can grade the attempt accordingly using the available grading methods (score/rubric/grade). The reviewer can also leave feedback in the form of comments for the attempt.
If the reviewers are allotted more than one learner to peer review, then they can easily navigate between the learners’ attempt from the dropdown or from the next/previous handles.
Once a learner has reviewed all the learner’s submission allotted to him/her, the peer review will be considered as completed and the calendar event will also be marked as completed, with a corresponding green tick.
Learners whose submission have been reviewed will be able to view the peer review from the Attempts page of the assignment.
On the right hand side, below the instructor’s scores section learners will see a Peer Review section. This section will show the peer review scores and grades (if any) given by the reviewer.
The name of the reviewers will not be visible if the instructor has enabled the anonymous peer review setting for the assignment. A generic term ‘Reviewer’ will be used instead of the actual name of the reviewer. Any comments added as a part of the feedback during the peer review will also be available to you on the Attempts page. Learners will also receive notifications when a reviewer comments on their submission.
If an assignment has a rubric attached, then rubric will show the scales selected for each criterion during the peer review. A triangle symbol will be shown on the top-right to indicate a peer review grade. Hovering over it will show who has graded this. Click here to learn more about how to peer review (assignment submissions).
| 💡In case the instructor has graded the submission as well, then the grades, scores and comments will also be shown as usual in the respective places, irrespective of the peer review scores. |
We hope that with the peer reviewed assignments, learners can improve their writing and at the same time have a more rewarding learning experience. Furthermore, a well-designed peer review assignment will allow learners to develop evaluation and assessment skills.
We would love to hear from you on this feature. Kindly write to us or give us a shout-out and share your feedback. So, that’s it for this feature update. See you next time! Till then stay healthy and stay collaborative.