Adjust Grading Settings

Have you run an assignment in Peerceptiv, but would like to see different student results? This article will discuss how to adjust the grading settings of your next assignment to more closely align with your desired learning objectives or outcomes. All of these settings can be accessed from the Edit Settings page or during the Assignment Set-Up Wizard.

To learn more about grades in general, please see Peerceptiv Grades: A Brief Overview for Instructors or Peerceptiv Grades: A Detailed Explanation for Instructors.

Adjust the Mean and Standard Deviation

If you choose Curved Grading as your grading style, then you may want to adjust the Mean and Standard Deviation. This will affect the curve that is applied to the Submission Grade and the Review Grade. 

The mean is the average grade that your students will receive and the standard deviation sets the variability along the curve. Most students will fall within the range of plus or minus one standard deviation. With the default setting of a mean of 85% and a standard deviation of 10, most students will have a submission grade and a review grade that falls between 75% and 95%. Said another way, roughly half of the grades will fall above 85% and half will fall below 85%. If this range doesn’t seem reasonable for your class, you can make the mean higher. Moving the mean up to 90% will increase the overall percentages in the class to be more in the range of 80%-100%. Adjusting the Standard Deviation would affect that overall range as well. If you have a mean of 90% and then change the standard deviation to 5, the range would fall between 85%-95%. 

If you chose Benchmark Grading as your grading style, then adjusting the mean and standard deviation would not affect the Submission Grade, but it would still affect the Review Grade.

Adjusting the mean and/or standard deviation is most effective when everyone’s submission grades and/or reviewing grades seem higher or lower than you expected.

Adjust the Weights

Adjusting the weights will put more or less emphasis on any of the three components of the Overall Grade. These components are the Submission Grade, Review Grade, and Task Grade. If you want the overall grade to be more impacted by one of these three components, then you can increase the weight of that component and decrease the weight of the others. Just be sure that all three weights added together equal 100%. 

Adjusting the Weights is most effective when you feel that students should get more (or less) credit for their submission, reviewing quality, or task completion.

Adjust the Influence of Teacher Reviews

If you plan on reviewing student submissions, you can adjust the “Teacher’s Rating Is” setting to change the way your reviews are factored into the calculation of the submission grade. The default is that the teacher’s rating is considered “just one in the set,” and counts the same amount as student reviews. 

If you would like the teacher reviews and ratings to have more influence over a student’s grade, then you can choose the “Sliding Scale” option and designate that a teacher review is counted for a larger percentage of the submission grade. If you choose 50%, for example, then a teacher review would count for 50% of the submission grade and all of the other student reviews would equal the other 50%. “Sliding Scale” is a good option if you plan to review every student’s submission but you still want student reviews to be factored in. 

You can also have teacher reviews entirely override student ratings by choosing “Overrides Student Grades.” This is a good option if you plan to do spot reviewing or if you would like to use instructor reviews to settle disputed grades or problematic submissions. You can always override student grades without doing an instructor review regardless of whether you choose this option.

For step-by-step instructions on entering a teacher review, please read Enter a Teacher Review.

To learn how to override student grades without entering a review, please read How to Override Grades.

Adjusting the value of the teacher reviews is only applicable if you or your TAs are planning to review student submissions.

Adjust the Bonus Review Value

Providing students with the opportunity to complete bonus reviews is a great way to increase student grades and help ensure that student submissions receive plenty of reviews and feedback. If this option is selected, students may complete as many bonus reviews as the number of required reviews. Bonus percentage points are added to the overall grade for each extra review completed. For example, if you set the Bonus Review Value at 3% and the required number of reviews was 3, then students could earn an additional 9 percentage points that are then added to their overall grade. 

Note: You must set the bonus review value before an assignment begins. Changing the bonus review value after an assignment is complete is only an option if you allowed students to complete bonus reviews during the review period.

Hold Grades for Manual Release

Finally, if you haven’t already done so, select “yes”  on the settings page (view advanced settings) to hold grades for manual release. This will enable you to view and adjust the grades before they are released to students (or passed back to the LMS). You can make individual student grade adjustments if needed by viewing the assignment results. Click the Results tab on the left side navigation bar. Click Toggle Full Results Data to view a detailed breakdown of the student grades. You can manually override any of these grades by clicking Override on the right for any particular student. When you have looked over the student grades and made any needed adjustments, you can publish the grades from the Results page by clicking Release Results to Students. This will make the assignment results visible to students and pass the grades to the LMS, if applicable.

You must select or change this setting before the reviewing period. After the reviewing period ends, please email [e-mail] to have it manually changed.