Giving and receiving meaningful feedback is an important skill for students to develop. The peer assessment process uses feedback exchange as a structured and collaborative learning opportunity through the analysis of one another’s work.
Peer assessment can further aid in getting students to take responsibility for their own learning, engage more deeply with course material, and gain further insight through a direct exchange of ideas. Remember that students often need significant guidance in developing skills in providing feedback. Building clear rubrics or feedback statements, feedback expectations, and methods for feedback for students to use in the process is always a good practice.
This article explores various methods of creating peer-evaluation assessment while making use of Brightspace and other educational technology tools. Brock does not have a dedicated peer evaluation tool at this time but there are ways 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 evaluation. Consider how peer evaluation is connected to the learning outcomes of the course. Peer evaluation is a method that facilitates class discussion and idea generation, giving students a chance to see how ideas are formed outside of their own biases. This process encourages equity, diversity, inclusion, and accountability in the classroom, while giving students an opportunity to provide well-meaning and constructive feedback.
Assignment structure about what purpose peer evaluation plays in learning outcomes, course progression, and transferrable skills is important to establish and communicate to students. Consider also what is actually being evaluated such as the original submission, the peer assessment process and engagement and any reflections or final/iterative edits to the assessment. Further to these considerations is what part technology will or will not play in accomplishing the goals of the assessment.
Please consider reading this article from Inside Higher Ed about Teaching Peer Feedback
Contact eddev@brocku.ca to further discuss the pedagogy behind peer evaluation.
Considerations when planning peer evaluation
Listed below are some guiding questions/aspects of the peer evaluation process that instructors should consider when formulating their own peer evaluation instances:
What sort of criteria and guidelines are being set for the students' submissions?
How many submissions, and reviews per submission, are expected?
What sort of framework and guiding questions will be used in the peer eval form?
Will groups be created? Either for submissions, or to compartmentalize the submission-review process?
Will the process include an aspect of self-reflection/review?
Will there be a resubmission opportunity for students to apply the feedback they received?
Will the feedback provided by students be evaluated? Or is the feedback part of a scaffolded learning process?
Will the reviews be done in-person? How long will the students have to complete them?
Will reviewers/submitters be anonymous to each other? How is this choice related to potential bias, as well as accountability for students?
Peer evaluation use cases in Brightspace
The following are a few examples of hypothetical assignments that incorporate Brightspace or other technology tools.
Contact edtech@brocku.ca for assistance in determining which tool(s) best serve your needs.
Example | Recommendation | Notes and guides |
Group presentation or project | Students are assigned to groups. Groups prepare a presentation or project. Projects are presented or shared with class. The audience provides feedback. Feedback is collected and distributed. | The Surveys tool can be used to gather information and the statistics display can efficiently accumulate quantitative feedback. An ungraded Quiz can also be used if instructors prefer the Quiz setup over Surveys |
Paper exchange | Students exchange papers with a partner or share their papers in a discussion topic. Students are provided a series of guiding questions or a rubric to work through for evaluating papers to be reviewed. Students submit an updated final draft based on feedback. | Create private group discussions; provide guiding questions in forum/topic description. https://cpibrock.atlassian.net/l/cp/ZX3wxdyp Submission of the final draft would likely happen in Assignments. |
Double-blind feedback | Students submit work to instructor. Submissions are anonymously distributed to peers. Students provide anonymous feedback to peers by filling out a rubric. Students receive feedback on original submission and evaluate its efficacy. | Assignments can be set to receive multiple files. The work of anonymizing papers and redistributing is done manually by the instructor through the feedback attachments in Assignments. |
Groups for asynchronous or synchronous collaboration and space to share files and provide feedback | Groups are created for students. Discussion Topics are generated for the members of each Group or MS Teams channels are created for each Group. Members can share and reply to others in Discussion Topics. Replies are graded by instructors. | Groups can be randomly populated, assigned by an instructor, or set for student self-enrolment. Discussions can be used to communicate feedback and allow for a less formal rating system. Discussions can be automatically restricted to any roster entity, including Groups and official Sections (LAB, SEM, TUT, etc.) https://cpibrock.atlassian.net/l/cp/ZX3wxdyp |
Discussions for peer evaluation
Discussion forums can be set up for students to share feedback and engage in discussions with their peers. Using the Discussion tool, you can facilitate peer collaboration between select groups of students or between all students in the course. The Discussion tool allows students to share text, audio or video files with their peers and reply to discussion posts.
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).
Basic Steps
The basic steps for creating a discussion area for peer evaluations are as follows:
Create groups for the peer evaluation process by making use of the Brightspace Groups tool.
In the Discussions area, create a Forum, and then a topic for the group discussion.
Set Group and Section Restrictions on the discussion topic.
If grading student submissions and peer evaluations, create an assignment in the Assignments area for students to submit their work for grading.
Groups
Peer review groups can be created using the Groups tool in Brightspace. Once you have created groups in your course, you have the option to set up group discussion forums, dropbox folders, or locker areas for students to share files with their group members. The Groups tool is great for setting up an online workspace where students can collaborate with their peers and provide feedback within Brightspace.
Related Resources:
Surveys
Surveys can be used for anonymous or non-anonymous peer evaluation in Brightspace. The survey tool is especially useful for students to share feedback following in-class or online presentations. The results of the surveys are instructor facing until the instructor creates an HTML report and selects print report, which can generate a pdf to be sent to students for review.
Related Resources:
Third Party Tools
Microsoft Teams
Can be used to facilitate synchronous online discussions between group members. Teams’ breakout rooms feature is particularly useful for peer assessment, as it allows students to collaborate and provide feedback in small groups within a larger Teams meeting. Using the breakout room feature, you can temporarily divide your meeting into separate sessions, and then bring students back to the main room after a set amount of time.
Related Resources:
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 Forms results to the students, which could prove arduous.
Related Resources:
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 an 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. Additionally, a clear rubric or set of expectations and feedback principles should be provided to students to adhere to principles of effective feedback and create safe and accountable spaces.
In-person peer evaluations could focus more on peer evaluation practice for students, as opposed to having a graded, individual evaluation.
If you wish to facilitate an in-person peer evaluation activity, please consider reaching out to cpi@brocku.ca for more information.