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Calibration Activities

Learn how Calibration works, how to set up a Calibration activity, how to interpret calibration scores, and how Micro-Calibration works.

Written by Support Team

A calibration activity helps align student grading with how you would grade, improving your students’ grading accuracy.‍

How Calibration Works

  • The instructor selects 3 creations, either from a previous Kritik activity OR uploaded from the instructor directly. We recommend using a well-done creation, average creation, and lower-scoring creation. However, try not to choose anything too obviously good or bad - students should be challenged when evaluating the creations.

  • The instructor grades those 3 creations using the rubric.

  • The students then also grade the 3 creations using the same rubric.

    • In a calibration activity, students ONLY submit grades for the creations. They do NOT submit any creations themselves, nor do they submit written evaluations or feedback. The purpose of a calibration activity is to ensure accurate grading power is assigned to each student. NOTE: Calibration activity is 0 weight only.

  • The students' grading powers are calibrated through Kritik’s algorithms on the backend.

  • The new grading power allocated to each student will apply to any future Kritik activities.

NOTE: There is only the evaluation stage when the calibration activity is scheduled. Students are only required to grade the three creations.‍

How to Create AI-generated Calibration Activities:

  1. Select the "Create an Activity with AI" button in activity page.

  2. Select "Calibration"

  3. Understand the Calibration Activity Suggestions

    • Calibration activity suggestions are similar to individual assignments with a few key differences:

      • Assignment Type: The task will always be a written assignment. No PowerPoints, images, or recordings are included.

      • Content: The activities are designed to cover introductory concepts and fundamental topics within your course.

  4. Edit the Pre-Created Activity

    • When you select a Calibration activity suggestion, the activity opens in edit mode. This allows you to make any necessary changes to the instructions, grading criteria, or other details.

    • All details, including the 3 sample creations, are pre-generated by AI.

    • You can select a Rubric Template or Create Rubric with AI, or customize Rubric

  5. Evaluate and Grade

    • The 3 sample creations are labeled by the AI as either "Good," "Medium," or "Bad."

    • In the Evaluation Notes section, the AI will also provide some additional context for each creation. While this is a useful guide, we encourage instructors to overwrite the AI-generated text with their own reasoning behind each grade.

  6. Schedule the Activity

    • Once you’ve reviewed the activity and added your grading, simply schedule the activity.

Adding Evaluation Notes

  • Instructors have the ability to add notes to each calibration creation. These notes are designed to provide students with insights into how the instructors graded the creations so students can become better graders.

  • The notes are made visible to students only after they have completed grading the calibration creations themselves. This timing ensures that students' grading is not influenced by the instructor's notes.

Interpreting Calibration Scores

  • Once a Calibration activity ends, students' grading powers are then calibrated through Kritik’s algorithm on the backend. The closer a student grades to how the instructor grades, the higher that student's grading power will be.

  • The new grading power allocated to each student will apply to any future Kritik activities.

Micro-Calibration

  • Manually editing students’ creation scores will adjust the grading power and evaluation scores of the students who evaluated that creation.

    • The peer evaluators of the adjusted-score creation will have the grades they assigned the creation compared with yours instead of with one another.

  • In order for micro-calibration to have the intended effect, it MUST take place before an activity has been marked as complete.

Editing Rubrics for Imported Calibration Activities

Instructors can now edit the rubrics of imported Calibration activities from different courses. See here the steps on how you can import activities in your Kritik course. To edit the rubric of a Calibration activity that has been imported, follow the below steps:

  1. Once you have imported your copied Calibration, click into this activity from your course Activities page and select "Edit Activity".

  2. Looking through your activity's settings, scroll down until you locate the Rubric section. Here, you can either select the dropdown above to change the rubric assigned to this activity (see here how you can create and manage existing rubric templates), or you can select "Edit Rubric" to make changes to the rubric template currently attached.

    NOTE: Make sure you make any edits needed before the Calibration activity commences. Rubrics for active activities CANNOT be edited if they have entered/surpassed the Evaluate stage.

The Ability to Add a Participation Grade for Calibration Activities

In Kritik360, instructors now have the ability to assign participation grades to calibration activities. This enhancement was implemented to promote student engagement and increase completion rates for calibration activities.

  1. Navigate to the "Completed Activities" section located at the bottom of the "Activity" page. This page can be accessed via the toolbar on the left-hand side.

  2. Next, select "Grade Sync" from the left-hand toolbar, then apply the "By Activity " filter at the top of the page. Locate your calibration activity, select the three-dot menu next to it, and choose "Sync again and overwrite".

  3. Select the purple Sync Activities button below the remaining activities.

  4. Finally, confirm that the grade has synced successfully by verifying it in your LMS.

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