Peer Assessments Back in CoursePlus
After many months of work and refinement, the Peer Assessment tool returned to CoursePlus back in August of this year. The core of the work focused on improving both the reliability and speed of the tool. Many core processes related to generating individual student assessments and assigning students to one another have been rebuilt from the ground up.
The following specific changes have been made:
- The interface of the tool has been refined to be less complex during the setup process.
- The interface now provides additional status about an assessment once it has been set up.
- New example rubrics designed by the CTL instructional design team are available during the rubric design process for guidance.
- Calculation of student scores is now done at the time a student submits an assessment, resulting in faster overall score calculation for students.
- Reporting is faster, and has been streamlined to reduce redundant clicks.
- The summary report for a student's assessed work in the Peer Assessment tool is now displayed in an overlay window, reducing repetitive page loading while reviewing multiple students' work.
- Multiple tooltips have been added on setup and reporting pages to improve usability and accessibility.
- Importing final Peer Assessment scores into the Gradebook now occurs automatically when a score is marked as final in the Peer Assessment tool.
The CoursePlus development team remains deeply committed to improving the Peer Assessment tool based on the feedback of the faculty, TAs, students, and staff who use the tool. The team has already begun to collect suggestions for user interface improvement, and will continue to iterate on the Peer Assessment interface — and performance — in the months ahead.
If you have any questions about how to use the Peer Assessment tool, please contact CTL Help. The CTL instructional design team is also available to provide guidance on how to create an effective Peer Assessment activity in your course.