Create an Async Mode Course and Assignment

This article describes how to set up an Async Mode course and Async Mode assignments. In Peerceptiv, the Async Mode course allows you to create a self-paced learning environment for students. It is ideal for programs which allow students to progress at their own pace (without assignment/phase deadlines or task restrictions) and finish at their own time. Async Mode gives students the opportunity to be independent learners who will finish their assignment tasks in order to receive their results and/or complete program requirements. Recent updates have made the Async Mode course even more flexible in allowing for competency-based grading, completion grading, and ungraded participation-based assignments. 

Note: Async Mode may be used with or without an “asynchronous” course environment. Please read this article to determine whether Peerceptiv Sync Mode or Async Mode is right for you. 

To set up an Async Mode course, please select that option on the New Course creation page.

The rest of the following article will describe how to set up an async mode assignment using the “Build a Custom Assignment” settings. You can also choose to build an async mode assignment using the standard workflow options.

Click “Build a Custom Assignment."

Select Peer Assessment or Team Member Evaluation Only. Peer Assessment allows students to upload a submission and then review peer submissions. Team Member Evaluation Only means that students will be evaluating their team members on the quality of their participation following a group activity. 

Use Live Presentations? Live Presentation assignments allow student reviewers to select submissions by name to review from a list of all available submissions. Select NO if you plan to have anonymous, randomized reviewing. Additionally, you should only say YES to this option if you plan to have an assignment deadline, as students will not be able to see their results until the deadline passes. Live Presentations will not work in async mode without a deadline.

Who Submits?

Individual Students requires individual students to submit.

Student Groups requires students to submit in groups (one submission per group). If you plan to have groups submit, we recommend setting it up so that students put themselves into groups whenever they are ready to submit. 

Instructor means that the instructor can upload submissions that each student is required to review. This is not recommended for Async Mode. 

Include Feedback Phase? The feedback phase requires students to read the review comments they receive, rate each comment for helpfulness, and reply back to the reviewer. If you require 3 reviews, then 3 feedback tasks will be required. Please be aware that if you choose to have a feedback phase, students will not be able to finish the assignment (or get results) until they complete all required tasks, including receiving all reviews and completing all feedback tasks for the reviews they received. If you want students to be able to finish faster, without relying on others, select NO feedback phase. 

Include Reflection Phase? The reflection phase requires students to receive all of their reviews and then reflect on the review comments and average ratings they received within written reflection questions. Again, if you want students to be able to finish the process faster without waiting to receive reviews, select NO reflection phase. 

Should there be deadlines? If you select NO, then the assignment will not have any deadlines, and students will only see their results upon completion of their required assignment tasks. This option depends on all students being aware that they must participate in all assignment tasks in order for themselves and others to get and receive results. 

If you select YES to have deadlines, then those deadlines will close the assignment for everyone and make all results available to students at that time. You can choose one end-of-assignment deadline or deadlines for each assignment phase, which will gradually end the assignment. Async deadlines are usually utilized at the end of a course, semester, or cohort when it needs to be closed out. Students can do any and all assignment tasks while the assignment is open, but once a deadline passes, that assignment or phase closes for all students and can not be reopened. Async deadlines are final, so we only recommend using them when you want the assignment to end. 

Once you have selected your core assignment settings, you will see an image of your selected core assignment workflow. The core settings cannot be changed after you click Submit. You’ll then transition to our editable assignment settings menu.

Details: Enter an assignment name and description.

Submission: Choose to allow or disallow file, link, and text entry submissions. Click each box to turn it on or off. 

Allow students to resubmit after assignment completion? Select Yes to allow students to resubmit after they receive their results. Allowing students to resubmit means that if students don’t like their score or want to redo the submission and reviewing process, they can essentially start over. Their original submission and grade are NOT saved if they choose to resubmit.

Review: How many reviews per student? This sets the requirement for how many reviews each student is required to complete. 

Grading: If you selected less than 3 reviews in the review setting or if you plan to only have comments on your rubric, then we recommend turning off the async accuracy check and setting up the assignment for “task grading only” or “ungraded - completion only.” We cannot guarantee valid or reliable submission grades for assignments that require less than 3 reviews. We also recommend selecting “No” for the accuracy check if your rubric has fewer than 5 rating prompts or no rating prompts.

Enforce Async Accuracy Check: If you select YES, the algorithm will check for review rating accuracy. If the student does not pass the reviewing accuracy threshold, an overall grade of zero will be issued. You should only select YES if you want to hold students accountable for accurate reviewing. You must require at least 3 reviews; you must have rating prompts on your rubric; and, you must be prepared for students to get an overall grade of zero if they aren’t accurate reviewers. 

How would you like grades to be calculated? 

Submission Grading - students will get a grade for the quality of their submission when they finish the assignment and complete all of their required assignment tasks. The overall grade will be the combined average rating scores of all reviewers, converted to a 100 percentage point scale. This option is ideal for competency-based grading. 

Task Grading Only - students will get an overall grade based on their task completion for the assignment. If they completed all required tasks, they will receive 100%. If a student doesn’t complete all assignment tasks, they will receive partial credit for completed tasks when the deadline passes. 

Ungraded - Completion Only - students will get a completion check mark when they complete their required tasks. This has no numerical grade associated with it. 

When will students be marked complete? After finishing their assigned tasks OR after finishing their assigned tasks and receiving reviews. 

With all grading options, you can choose to show or hide rating, comment, or grade results from the student results pages. However, hiding grades will not prevent results from passing back to the LMS gradebook upon completion. Submission Grading assignments will send a submission grade, Task Grading assignments will send a task grade, and Ungraded assignments will send back a completion checkmark. 

Advanced Settings:

Convert document submissions to PDF - we recommend allowing Peerceptiv to convert all document submissions to PDF for a smoother viewing experience. However, if students are required to submit a PowerPoint with audio or speaker notes, or a spreadsheet, then please uncheck this option.

Send email notifications - we will send students an email when they have received reviews and when they have results for the assignment.

Advanced Deadline Settings available for Async Mode Course Copy

If you copy an async mode course, there is now the option to set up all assignment deadlines at once for your newly copied course. This option assumes that you want all of the assignment deadlines to have the same dates for all assignments in the course. 

To do this, scroll down on the course creation screen when you are copying the new course (or edit your course settings after copying) and click "Show Advanced Deadline Settings." Then, set the "Course Deadlines" toggle to on, with a green checkmark. 

From there, set the deadlines which will apply to all of your assignments and click Save.