Self and Peer Assessment

Self and Peer Assessment in Original Course View

The Self and Peer Assessment feature is a tool that is designed to enhance the reflective learning skills of students. Reviewing the work of fellow students through criterion-based reference evaluation promotes constructive feedback. The constructive feedback that students give to and receive from their peers can enhance their own comprehension of the subject material and provide valuable insights into their own learning efforts.

The Self and Peer Assessment feature is particularly suitable for faculty who are teaching large classes, by distributing the administrative workload. Quality feedback can be provided from several different individuals, instead of relying upon a single faculty member.

In order to provide a comfort level adequate for encouraging candid but objective assessments and feedback, faculty can choose to use the option of Self and Anonymous Evaluations.

Screenshot highlighting how to create a self and peer assessment

To create a Self and Peer Assessment: From the Course Menu select a Content Area, such as Assessments, then click the drop-down menu labeled Assessments and select Self and Peer Assessment.

Peer Assessment in Ultra Course View

Status: Available with Limitations

At this time, Peer Review can be enabled for Assignments in the Ultra Course View. It is limited to qualitative feedback at this time, but quantitative scoring is in development.

To enable Peer Review, click the Peer Review Settings in the settings panel for any Assignment.

Peer Review Features Available

  • Set different due dates for the initial assignment submission and the completion of peer review: Instructors can set how many reviews are expected from each student. Peers are assigned randomly and automatically.
  • Late submitters and reviewers remain part of the task and can continue to participate: Instructors can clearly see who was late. This is a huge improvement over the implementation in Original Course View and superior to implementations found it other learning management systems where students who are late on anything can no longer participate.
  • Tracking: Instructors can track students’ progress toward completion.
  • Rubrics: Students can see the rubric that will optionally be used for the grade. Instructors can grade using a rubric.
  • Complete, single view: When grading, the instructor can see all this information in a single view: the student’s submission, feedback provided by the students’ peers, and the feedback the current student gave to their peers.
  • Anonymous mode for students: The identities of peers are hidden from students but viewable by instructors.
  • Censoring: Instructors can hide reviews deemed inappropriate or harmful.

Peer Review Features Planned for Future Development

  • Quantitative peer reviews: While a peer can view a rubric for guidance on providing feedback, the rubric can’t be used by students to provide a score.
  • Non-anonymous mode for students: Names of peers are always hidden from students. If an instructor wants students to know who they evaluate, it is necessary to request students to add their names to their submissions. Hidden names from instructors are not supported in this release.
  • Groups: There is no direct group support yet. However, because the review period excludes non-submitters automatically, it’s possible to set up multiple assignments with Peer Review enabled and set Release Conditions by group membership. This way, assigned peers will always be members within a student’s group. Group submissions aren’t supported in this release.
  • Multiple prompts with essay questions: In this release, only a single text prompt is supported for an Assignment with Peer Review. If there are multiple topics to which a student is to respond and receive feedback, those should all be outlined in a single prompt or broken up into several assignments.
  • Separate grades for students’ submissions and their reviews: In this release, there is a single grade and rubric for an assignment. If the instructor wishes to communicate different scores for those two parts of the process, those can be outlined in the feedback.


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