The following article breaks down various methods of creating peer-evaluation assessment in Brightspace. Brock does not have a dedicated peer evaluation tool at this time, however, there are ways for instructors to leverage existing tools to achieve the desired functionality.
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Peer Evaluation and Pedagogy
It’s important to establish and understand what might be your pedagogical reason for utilizing peer evaluations. What’s the end goal? Is it to assess student’s abilities to provide well-meaning and constructive feedback? Or is it to simply facilitate class discussion and idea-generation, with less of a focus on the assessment aspect?
Our Educational Development team (EdDev) has some /wiki/spaces/EKE/pages/1054736388 that can aid instructors with teaching about proper feedback, example peer-eval rubrics, and more.
If you wish to discuss the pedagogy behind peer evaluation further, please feel free to reach out to cpi@brocku.ca
Brightspace Discussions for Peer Evaluation
To begin, instructors may wish to review CPI’s discussion documentation for information on creating forums and topics. They may also wish to review the Groups information.
If instructors wish to keep the peer evaluation process on the Brightspace platform, their best option is to make use of the Discussions tool. Discussions allow students to create posts with attachments, so they are able to type out or attach a file to be viewed and evaluated by their peers, whether it be a text document, video, presentation, etc. CPI has a Discussions FAQ area for students who may desire information on how to add attachments to posts.
If the instructor wishes to grade both the student’s submission, and the evaluations provided by their peers, the instructor should consider creating a tandem Assignment submission. Instructors could then ask students to post their materials in both the Assignment submission, and the Discussion Topic. This is beneficial, as instructors will be able to grade the submission itself in the Assignment area, and the evaluations in the Discussions area, so long as they are set up for the discussion topic to be assessed.
If instructors choose to grade student submissions and their evaluations, it would be best if they were separate grades, for the sake of automating the process into the gradebook. The submissions can be graded through an assignment, and the evaluations can be graded through Discussions, or Microsoft Forms (see more information below).
Third Party Tools
Microsoft Forms
By using Microsoft Forms, instructors could create an evaluation guideline for students to fill out and follow, this can aid in providing constructive feedback to their peers. It is recommended this be used in tandem with the Brightspace Discussions area, which gives students a place to post their submissions to be evaluated.
This method is recommended for smaller classes, as instructors will have to be the ones to distribute the Microsoft form results to the students, which could prove arduous.
Kritik
Kritik is a third-party peer evaluation tool that instructors may wish to learn more about. Please note: it does require a subscription fee for students, as Brock does not have a institution license. The tool is already integrated with Brock’s Brightspace, which means instructors can add the tool to their Content area in their course site via the External Tools option.
Kritik has an extensive help centre, which should prove useful when working with the tool.
Some CPI members have worked with Kritik, so if you wish to have a discussion about the tool, please reach out to cpi@brocku.ca
In-Person Peer Evaluation
Instructors may also consider an in-person peer evaluation activity, where students discuss and evaluate each others' work in person. Students can either work with hard copies of their work, or they can post on Brightspace beforehand, then discuss in class.
This may be best suited as a seminar activity, or for a small class.
In-person peer evaluations could focus more on instilling the evaluation process and practice into students, as opposed to grading their individual evaluations.