Peer Review

Courses sometimes incorporate a more formalized approach to peer feedback in the form of Peer Review. This setting in Canvas allows for an Assignment to be turned in with the peer review function wherein the submitted assignment is then viewable by a peer (or selected number of peers) for editing, commentary, and revision. Peer Review often needs to take place over the course of two weeks as one week will be the assignment completion (e.g. Week 2 Assignment) and the next week (Week 3) will be reviewing and feedback.

Note: Courses with Peer Review are recorded in the Course Oddities Section.

Complete the following steps to set up the Peer Review function in Canvas:

• Determine the number of reviewers.

• Determine if the partners will be chosen manually or automatically. -Set the review by date to be 3:00AM the day after the assignment due date (i.e. Assignment Due Date: 04/22/2024, 3:00 AM; Peer Review Assigned Date: 04/23/2024, 3:00AM).

• Peer Review dates must be set each term a course runs.

• Peer Review cannot have a set “due date” so add a reminder to the end of week checklist to ensure students remember to complete the peer review.

• Check the Course Oddities doc (in the Update checklist) to see if a course has peer review.

Students are able to use the assignment rubric, a comment box, or in-document suggestions/edits in the peer review function. Instructors’ grades and comments are only viewable to the student who turned in the assignment, not the students who perform peer review, so the feedback is still private. The instructor also sees the peer comments so they can assess the student feedback as part of the assignment as well. Rubrics for peer reviewed assignments will often have a peer review or feedback category. However, instructors sometimes have to grade the assignment before peer review is actually submitted.

Note: Some of our Unity Courses have Peer Review assignments that do not use the Peer Review Canvas Function.