Individual Peer Assessment Assignments

Note: If you are using Peerceptiv in an LMS, please always start by creating an assignment link in your LMS first, and then use that link to access Peerceptiv.

The directions that follow explain using the 'Build a Custom Assignment' settings to create a standard, individual peer assessment assignment. For an easier and quicker set up process, click the "Choose a Standard Workflow" button and then select the Peer Assessment workflow.

In these assignments, each student uploads a product during the submission phase, then rates and reviews peer work products during the review phase, and then lastly may participate in a feedback phase where they read the comments their work received and rate them for their helpfulness. 

1. Select Build Your Own Assignment and then Individual Students and click Next in the bottom right.

2. Keep the default Peer Reviews unless the assignment will only be graded by the instructor/TA with no student peer review. Select Teacher Graded Only if the instructor/TAs will be doing all of the reviewing and with no student participation. Then, select Next.

3. The Feedback Phase of a Peerceptiv assignment is the third phase where the submitter rates and comments on the helpfulness of the reviews they received. This step holds the reviewers accountable by letting them know how their comments were perceived and how they can provide more helpful feedback in the future. We recommend keeping this step for most assignments.

Note: In situations where there is a tight turnaround time before the next assignment or where there will be more than 4 reviewers/submission, the instructor may choose to not have a feedback phase in order to ease the assignment demands on the students.

4. Details: Add an assignment name and description. If you have a detailed description posted elsewhere, you can simply refer students to that description or post the full description in both places. Click Next to move to the submission type screen.

5. Submission: If all of the default submission types are allowed, students can choose to either upload a file, post a link, or directly type their submission into Peerceptiv (they must choose only one of these methods). If students post a link, please remind them to make sure that any sharing or privacy settings are set to allow peer reviewers access. To remove a submission type, click on that type and it will not be allowed, as shown by a red X instead of a green check.

Submission notes:

• Only one submission can be uploaded per student per assignment. If students need to upload multiple files, have them create a Zip file and upload that folder.
• Peerceptiv has a 1G file limit. If students will be submitting files beyond that size, please deselect ‘File’ and have students link to the file after they post it online.
• We recommend selecting "Link" for all video submission assignments. Students must upload a link to their video on YouTube, Google Drive, Vimeo, or another video hosting service. 

6. Review: Select the number of reviews each student will complete. For individual assignments where grades are being generated, there must be at least 3 reviews per document for valid and reliable grades. In situations where the instructor will be reviewing or the grades are not being counted toward the final grade, selecting fewer reviews per student is possible.

7. Advanced Reviewing Options: 

• Allow extra, bonus reviews allows students to complete additional reviews beyond the required ones for extra credit. Each additional review completed will count as 10% added to the task grade. Students can only complete the same number of bonus reviews as required reviews. For example, if there are 3 required reviews, a student could complete up to 3 additional bonus reviews for a total of 30 percentage points added to the task grade. Bonus reviews that are started and not completed are counted against the student’s reviewing task grade. If bonus reviews are enabled, students may get above a 100% for their task grade.
• Allow students who haven't submitted to peer review permits students to review peer documents without having submitted their own. They are not allowed to submit after they begin the reviewing process. This option must be checked in situations where not everyone who reviews has to submit, like in presentation assignments when only a portion of the students submit on a given day and then the rest review those submissions without submitting their own work to that assignment. Students who do not submit will get a 0 for their submission grade and will not be able to participate in the feedback phase, but they will get a grade for the reviews that they complete.
• Require students to perform a self-review will require students to use the rubric to assess their own submission. Their ratings will not be counted toward the overall grade. 

8. Feedback: If the assignment has a Feedback stage, you can choose to accept the default prompt and ratings or edit them to have students focus on the specific criteria that the reviewers should include.

9. Grading Options 

• Grading Style
  • Curved Grading uses the mean and standard deviation set by the instructor to generate the submission and reviewing grades.
  • Benchmarking allows instructors to set the grading curve based on the highest and lowest ranked submissions. After the reviewing period is over, the instructor will grade the top 5 and bottom 5 submissions. The grades given to those 10 submissions set a linear curve that is used to generate the submission grades for all submissions.

The mean and standard deviation will be used to generate the reviewing accuracy and helpfulness grades in both curved and benchmarked grades.

• Teacher Review Impact

• • Regular Review means that any instructor or TA reviews completed will count the same as a student review in terms of determining the submission grade. For example, if there are 3 student reviews and 1 instructor review, each review will count approximately 25% towards the student’s submission grade.

• • Override Student Reviews means that the instructor or TA ratings are the only ratings that will be used to determine the student’s submission grades. If there is no instructor review on a document, then the student ratings will determine the grade.

• Grade Release
  • • Automatic grade release will publish the results immediately after the final assignment deadline passes. If the course is linked to the LMS, the overall assignment grade will be sent to the LMS grade book. Students will also be able to see their grade and the reviews on their document after grades are released.
    • Manual grade release means that an instructor or TA must release the results to students, giving the instructor a chance to review and approve the grades before the students see them. Students will not be able to see their grades, their average ratings, or the comments on their submission until the results are released.

• Grade curve

A mean of 85 and a standard deviation of 10 has been shown to produce grades as valid and reliable as those by an expert reviewer. However, instructors can use the default settings or set their own mean and standard deviation.

If the assignment would generate high grades if graded by an instructor (for example, if it’s a low-stakes assignment where the students would likely generally receive an A on the assignment, consider raising the mean.

• Grade weight

Set the amount each grading category will count towards the overall percentage grade. The default 40% submission grade, 40% reviewing grade, and 20% task grade has been shown to generate overall grades that are as valid and reliable as instructor grades.

Adjust the numerical percentage amounts on the right with the arrows or type in the desired percentages. The total must be 100.

10. Deadlines: Set the publication date (when students will be able to view the assignment), the submission deadline, reviewing deadline, and feedback deadline. To edit these dates,  click on the calendar, the end date, or the duration. The publication can be set for the current date but all other  dates all must be future dates.

Peerceptiv recommends allowing at least 2 days for each phase, with a longer reviewing phase for assignments that will take students a significant amount of time to complete the required reviews in a thoughtful manner.

Note: The deadline time is set at the course level to reduce confusion. After setting up the assignment, you can edit the course level setting if desired.

11. Advanced Settings

• Convert document submissions to PDF is recommended for optimal reviewing experience. However, if the file submission is a spreadsheet, Powerpoint with audio files, zip file, video file, or other file format that does not convert to PDF, please uncheck this box.

• Send email notifications will remind students when a phase has begun, when there is 24 hours before a deadline and the student has not completed a task, and when the grades are released.

If not all students are completing every assignment phase or if students are not completing all of the assignments set up in Peerceptiv, we recommend that you uncheck this setting.

12. Click Finish to finalize the settings and open the assignment in your course.

After the assignment is created, you can continue to edit the settings by clicking on the wheel icon at the upper left of the overview screen. Before the assignment is published, remember to add a rubric.