New Peer Assessment Tool in Online Courses

March 04, 2014 | 1 Minute Read

We're very excited to announce that a new peer assessment tool has been added to the online course system. Developed with a lot of great input from faculty and TAs here at the School, the peer assessment tool allows faculty to set up rubrics against which students will be assessed. There are a number of configurations available for organizing students for assessment:

• Students can assess themselves
• Students can assess [n] random other students
• A student can assess everyone in her group
• One group of students can assess another group of students
• Everyone in the class can assess one group of students
• Faculty and TAs can assess students individually

Assessments can be linked to course drop boxes, so that students are automatically assigned the appropriate files from those drop boxes to assess. Assessments can be points-based or not, and points-based assessments can be linked to the Gradebook for automatic import of final assessment grades into the Gradebook.

The peer assessment tool delivery process works like this:

1. Create the basic parameters for the asssessment (when it starts/ends, what kind of assessment, etc.).
2. Create a rubric or copy from an existing rubric against which students will be assessed.
3. Students assess each other's (or their own) work using the rubric.
4. Faculty and TAs review student assessments and release results to students.

The peer assessment tool is currently available only in online courses, but will be coming to CoursePlus in June.

There is extensive help documentation built into the new peer assessment tool, but if you're interested in using the tool, we strongly encourage you to talk about creating a great peer assessment with your course instructional designer!