A New Version of the Peer Assessment Tool Arrives on March 19
Peer assessments allow students to demonstrate mastery of a topic by evaluating the work of their peers using subject area knowledge and a rubric detailing the specific criteria against which a peer should be evaluated. CoursePlus has long had a peer assessment tool, and peer assessments have formed the core assessment activities of many courses.
The current peer assessment tool is not without issues, however. Although designed to be a tool for quick, reflective assessment, it evolved over the past decade to include many additional features and assessment scenarios. As a result of these patchwork changes over a long period of time, the Peer Assessment tool in CoursePlus became quite slow. The complexity of the code caused numerous additional problems to appear over the years.
The CoursePlus team took these issues to heart and rebuilt the Peer Assessment tool. The new version of the Peer Assessment tool launches on March 19, 2024.
In this first in a series of posts about the new Peer Assessment tool, we’ll take a look at some of the highlights from this rebuild. Subsequent posts will cover interface and workflow changes in detail.
High Level Highlights of the Rebuild
Future blog posts will go into some of these topics in more detail, but here are the highlights of the new version of the Peer Assessment tool:
- The new version is orders of magnitude faster the current version. Pages that used to load in minutes because of the size of the class now load in seconds.
- Problems with the system initially assigning students to each other have been eliminated.
- The student activity view has been redesigned for clarity and speed.
- You can import or copy peer assessments (and their associated rubrics) from any course you teach or on which you are a TA.
- The Peer Assessment tool now uses the same rubric tool as the Gradebook.
- Rubrics can be exported to PDF, instead of Excel.
- You link to a individual peer assessment from the Schedule Builder tool, instead of a page which lists all peer assessments in a course.
- If a student has chosen pronouns in JHED, they appear when filling out their rubric.
- It’s a whole lot simpler (and clearer) for a student to say “I’m done filling out this rubric for this person.”
- Students can now see their results inside of CoursePlus, instead of only being able to see results in email messages.
A New Interface for the Peer Assessment Tool
A new version of any tool brings with it a number of changes to the user interface. Although an upcoming blog post will go into the interface changes in more detail, here’s a high-level overview of the new Peer Assessment tool interface.
All activity for an individual peer assessment is performed from a single set of tabs. The Setup tab controls the settings for the peer assessment.
This form is a lot like the old Peer Assessment setup form, but has been streamlined and reorganized for greater clarity. One small but important change about this form: faculty and TAs can now change the closing/due date for a peer assessment at any time, even if the peer assessment is currently open to students. That simply wasn’t possible in the old version of the tool.
The Rubric tab contains the rubric students use when completing their peer assessments.
The rubric editor in the new Peer Assessment tool is the same one used in the Gradebook since the start of the current academic year. It’s fast, flexible, and intuitive. As with the rubric tool in the Gradebook, you can import rubrics from any peer assessment or Gradebook item in any course you teach or on which you are a TA.
The Student Activity tab received the biggest overhaul compared to the old version of the tool. The Student Activity tab contains all of the functionality of the old version of the tool, though in a simpler, easier-to-process interface.
A number of relevant actions that used to be on the main Peer Assessment tool page (which lists all peer assessments in a course) were moved onto the Student Activity tab. The Student Activity tab lets you see all the students or groups and their current state of work. It also lets you send reminders to complete work, edit final scores, and send students their aggregate results.
The new Peer Assessment tool also works a bit more smartly than before. If it’s before the date and time that a peer assessment opens to students, the default view for faculty and TAs is the Setup tab. If it’s after the date and time that a peer assessment opens to students, the default view for faculty and TAs is the Student Activity tab.
How Existing Peer Assessments Will Work in the New Version
All existing peer assessments and rubrics will be automatically imported into the new version. There is nothing faculty or TAs need to do to have their existing peer assessments rolled over into the new version of the tool.
When the new Peer Assessment tool goes live, no new peer assessments can be created in the old version of the tool. The old version of the tool will remain in CoursePlus for two years so faculty can review student work as needed. The old version of the tool will only be visible in course sites where the course began before March 19, 2024.
Finally, it’s important to note that the self-assessment peer assessment type is not supported in the new version of the tool. If you need to include a self-assessment in your course, you should use the survey or Quiz Generator tools to create a self-assessment that each student can complete.
As always, if you have questions about the new version of the Peer Assessment tool, please reach out to the CTL Help team, and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.