Use Review Circles or Assign Reviews Manually

This article describes how Review Circles work in Peerceptiv individual peer assessment assignments and how to manually assign reviews in both individual and group assignments.

Click below to learn how to:
Use Review Circles

Manually Assign Reviews in Individual Peer Assessment or Live Presentation Assignments

Manually Assign Reviews in Group Peer Assessment or Live Presentation Assignments

When choosing the settings for your peer assessment assignment, you will be asked how you would like reviews to be distributed. In most cases, you should choose “Randomly” to use our sophisticated randomized distribution algorithm. Randomized reviewing is fair, unbiased, keeps the assignment running smoothly without instructor intervention, and easily accommodates late submissions. You should only use ‘Review Circles” or “Assign Manually” when you want to have manual control over which submissions students will be assigned to review. 

Review Circles

Review Circles is an option in the settings menu for individual peer assessment assignments. For individual peer assessment assignments, all students upload their own submissions, and if review circles is enabled, they'll be required to review submissions from other students within their review circle. Depending on what settings you've chosen, they'll have to either review all other students in the circle or a set number of randomized students from within the circle.

Review Circles is useful when you want students to have regular reviewing groups that will be maintained across multiple assignments, when you’d like group members to review different individual pieces of a group project (intra-group reviewing), or when you want students to review all submissions that relate to the same topic (in this case all members of the review circle have the same submission topic), or no other submissions that relate to the same topic (in this case each member of the reviewing circle has a different topic). 

For group peer assessment assignments, students only upload one submission per group, so review circles is not an option. However, we have expanded the functionality for manually assigning submissions in group assignments. If you select "Manually Assign Reviews," you can manually assign reviews during the review phase or choose a setting that requires that each student in a group must review a different group's submission.

Review Circles Settings Options

How many reviews per student?

You can decide if you want students to review all other submissions in their review circle (all review circle submissions) or review a set number of randomly selected submissions from within their review circle (if you select 2, for instance, students will receive 2 randomly selected submissions from within their review circle). 

Set up Review Circles

After setting up the assignment, you will notice a “Review Circles” tab on the left side bar of the instructor dashboard. Click this tab to set up your review circles - this can be done at any time before the review phase begins, and can be done immediately upon assignment creation. 

If you have Peerceptiv configured with Canvas, Blackboard, or D2L, you’ll be able to sync your review circle groups via Circle Sync, which will pull any set of groups from the LMS into Peerceptiv (the same way that group sync works) to populate your review circles. 

If you do not have groups set up in your LMS course, you can use a number of different methods for setting up the circles: 

New Circle - manually set up each circle and select participants from your roster. Click New Circle for each new circle, then click the plus sign to add students to that circle. To move a student from one circle to another, click the down arrow next to their name, select Move, and then click the plus sign next to the circle you want to move them to. 

Circle Sync - bring groups in from your LMS to create the circles.

Upload Circle List - set up circles via a CSV (spreadsheet) upload

Auto Generate Circles - Peerceptiv will randomly generate circles for you

Copy Circles from a Past Assignment - if you have used review circles in the past

Manage Permissions - This will allow you to open circles up for student circle self-management (meaning students can form their own circles if this option is toggled on) or make circle peers anonymous (meaning students won't be able to see who is in their or other circles if this option is toggled on). 

Once the circles are set up, the system will automatically assign reviews without your intervention during the review phase - you do not need to manually assign reviews if you are using review circles. 

Manually Assign Reviews in an Individual Peer Assessment Assignment

Note: Use this option only if you are NOT doing review circles but would still like to manually assign reviews. Reviewers can only be manually assigned to a submission after it has been submitted. You can assign reviewers during the submission phase, but no reviewers can be assigned to a submission that has not yet been submitted. For this reason, we recommend assigning reviewers at the end of the submission phase or when the reviewing phase starts. 

You can manually assign reviews in any peer assessment assignment, and do not need to click the "Assign Manually" setting in order to do this. If you select "Assign Manually" in the Review settings of the assignment, students will not be permitted to pull reviews using our random review distribution method and late submissions will not be permitted. Instructors can still submit on behalf of individual students after the submission deadline has passed if there are late submissions. The instructor will then need to assign reviews to any submissions added after the deadline.

Go to the Peerceptiv assignment dashboard. Click on the Advanced drop down menu in the Actions bar and then Manage Reviews.

Manually select Reviewers

If you would like to assign a small or limited number of reviewers, you can click Edit by any student submitter's name to assign reviewers to their submission. 

If you would like to assign many reviewers all at once, click the Options button. "Copy Assigned Reviews from Assignment" will allow you to copy assigned reviewers from a previous assignment

Upload Reviewers using a Spreadsheet (CSV file)

Select the option to "Upload Assigned Reviews as CSV."

Create a spreadsheet (save it as a CSV file) with the format shown below.

submitter_1@edu	reviewer_2@edu	reviewer_3@edu	...
submitter_2@edu	reviewer_3@edu	reviewer_1@edu	...

Click Choose CSV and then select the spreadsheet you created earlier or follow the directions in Step 1 to create a CSV file. Then click Upload.

*Note: If you are manually assigning reviewers via CSV upload in a Live Presentation assignment, you must first click the button to Delete All Reviews and then you can upload your CSV. 

You will see a list of the student or group submissions and the assigned reviewers.

Step 5: Click Finish. You will be taken back to the list of reviewers. If any reviewer has been incorrectly assigned or if others need to be added, you can click Assign New Reviews. If you are done assigning reviewers, click the X at the top right of the reviewer card.

Manually Assign Reviews in a Group Peer Assessment Assignment

For a group peer assessment assignment, students are in groups and upload one submission per group, to be reviewed by individuals who are in other groups. However, you can now select to manually assign reviewers.

If you select this option, our randomized reviewing distribution will not occur during the review phase. Instead, after the submission phase has ended and the assignment has moved into the review phase, you will need to assign reviews. If you notice that all submissions have been uploaded before the submission deadline, you can also end the submission phase and upload reviews right away. Either way, you have to wait to assign reviews until students have submitted and the assignment is in the review phase. 

Late submissions by students are not permitted with this setting. Instructors can still submit on behalf of individual students after the submission deadline has passed if there are late submissions. The instructor will then need to assign reviews to any submissions added after the deadline.

Click the button to “Assign Reviews” on the Actions bar in the dashboard or click the Advanced drop down menu on the Actions bar and then “Manage Reviews.” Click the “Options” drop down menu and select a bulk review management option or click the “Edit” button next to the name of each submitter to add new reviewers to that submission. 

Options:

1. Assign each group member to a unique submission - this requires that each member of a group has to review a different submission. For example, one member of group 2 has to review group 1, another member of group 2 has to review group 3, and so on. Be aware that if you choose this option, each group member only reviews ONE submission. 
2. Copy assigned reviews from assignment - allows you to import reviews from another assignment in the same course. The original assignment being copied could have used manual or randomized reviewing.
3. Upload assigned reviews as CSV - use the format shown to create a spreadsheet of submitters and assigned reviewers. You must use the email address for the group member who actually uploaded the assignment for the submitter. This is shown in the reviewer management table.
4. Assign de-anonymized reviews - this will assign all reviewers in the class to a submission and identify the group it belongs to.
5. Manage Permissions - This will allow you to open circles up for student circle self-management (meaning students can form their own circles if this option is toggled on) or make circle peers anonymous (meaning students won't be able to see who is in their or other circles if this option is toggled on). 
6. Delete all reviews - this will clear all assigned reviews

You can also click the Edit button for each submission to assign reviewers one by one in the system.