Peer Review | Setting up

Need help setting up your peer review assignment?

Updated over a week ago

Quick Setup VIdeo

The title, in the example: Peer Review, can be changed from within the LMS (Blackboard, Brightspace, Canvas). You can also fill out a different title here, but in this case the old name will show in your course-overview. 

Click use copy of existing to select a previous Peer Review assignment of you or one of your colleagues. A copy of this existing assignment will be made, copying all teacher contributions (instructions, deadlines, criteria). Student contributions are not copied. After the copy is made, you can adjust all settings you need. 

All Peer Review assignments in this list are assignments that you are added to as a teacher. To add yourself to an assignment of a colleague, simply open this particular assignment. After, this assignment will also show in the use copy of existing-list. (If you are using FeedbackFruits through our platform or .direct, this feature is not available, instead you can copy the existing assignment.) 

Step 1: Instructions

Fill in instructions. Fill in your overall instructions for the assignment. Note that you will not be able to publish/save the assignment if you leave this field blank.

The assignment can be an individual- or a group assignment. Click change to choose between one of the following options:

Hand in:

  1. Individually

  2. As a group

Review:

  1. Individually. Students will individually get assigned to anyone.

  2. Within groups. Students individually get assigned someone within their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ is chosen)

  3. Outside of their group. Students individually get assigned to someone, not in their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ is chosen)

  4. As a group. All members of a group get assigned the same work. (Disabled if ‘individually’ is chosen)

This will allow for the following combinations with their respective use:

  1. Hand in work individually, review individually.
    Use this option if you want your students to individually hand in their assignment and then be linked to discuss the work of one or more random peers who have also handed in work for this assignment. Let’s say all students are required to review 2 submissions, once they’ve submitted their assignment (and the deadline has passed), they will be allocated the submission of two other individuals to provide feedback to.

  2. Hand in work individually, review within groups.
    Use this option if you want your students to individually hand in their assignment and want to use smaller groups to distribute the reviews. Let's say you have a class of 20 students and you want 5 groups. In this case students will review the work of (a) peer(s) from their group of 4.

  3. Hand in work individually, review outside of their groups. Use this option if you want students to individually hand in their assignments and get assigned to review the work of one or more peers outside their own group. For instance, if each group is to cover a different subject in their submissions, and students should review a topic they did not cover themselves.

  4. Hand in work as group, review individually.
    Use this option if the assignment that needs to be handed in, is made by a group of students. Let's say you want your students to work in groups of 4 on the assignment. They hand it in as group and then the individual students randomly get work distributed from other groups to review. In this scenario, if every student is required to review the work of one group, the work of each group will be provided with by 4 students from other groups.

  5. Hand in work as group, discuss as a group. Use this option if you want students to hand in their submission as a group, and if all group members should be assigned to the same work. In case each group has 4 students, this scenario will call for all 4 group members to review the same submission uploaded by another group

For more information on configuring groups when using FeedbackFruits within Blackboard, Brightspace or Canvas, click here. If it's not possible to sync the groups within your LMS or if you are using the platform, you can find more information about how to create groups here.

Step 2: Submissions

Required submissions Set the amount of files that students are required to hand in. Note that students' will not be assigned to a peer for review if they submit fewer files than required. The submission requirement can be set at exactly, minimum or between your chosen amount. Students can always hand in more files than required. In the example given in the screenshot, you would set this to 2: they hand in a word doc and slides. 

Deadline Set the hand-in deadline. Students have to upload their work before this deadline. When this deadline has passed, students will be assigned work of a peer or group to review. When no deadline is set in this step, students are assigned work to review when 2 students have handed in. Click here for an explanation about how peers are assigned. When not setting a deadline there is a chance that the allocations cannot be distributed equally, therefore setting no deadline works best in a 'live' feedback session.

Allow students to hand in these file types Check the box next to the file type you want your students to hand in. Students will not be able to upload file types to you deselect. For an overview of which formats are supported for each file type, click here.

Please note that embedded audio and video in documents and slideshows cannot be played in FeedbackFruits.

Submitter anonymity The students who review the assignments won't be able to know the name of the peer they are reviewing.

Instructions (optional) If you have specific hand-in instructions for your students (such as the desired font, line spacing, naming the file, etc.) fill them in here. Example: Please name your student number in the file-name. Upload both your essay and the slides you will use when presenting about your essay.

Allowing late hand in

If a deadline for submission has been set for the students, you have the option to allow for students to hand in after the submission deadline has passed. Simply enable this option (as shown on the screenshot below), and students will be able to hand in after the submission deadline as well. Keep in mind that enabling this option will not affect the student analytics - you will still be able to see if students have submitted on time or not.

Step 3: Given reviews

In this step, you  specify criteria to help guide students as they give feedback. Click configure to edit, add, or delete criteria. Click here for a detailed guide on setting criteria.

Required number of peers to review: Specify how many peers/groups each student has to review. Reviewing multiple peers is good practice, giving students a broader view of how their peers did in the assignment. At the same time, it means that students get reviewed by several peers, giving a better, more nuanced view of their own efforts.

Self-assessment Students are able to review their own work before reviewing their peers.

Scheduling deadlines Set the deadline for giving feedback. Note that reviewers will not be able to view or edit their reviews after this deadline passes. Leave the deadline blank to allow reviewers to view and/or edit their feedback indefinitely.

Allocations:

By clicking ‘change’ you will be able to select your preferred method of allocation. If you set this to "all," students will have to review everybody in their group, be mindful of the student workload when using this setting!

Automatically - One by one: The students will be assigned a review one by one, the second review will appear after starting the first one, and so on. This is the default and recommended method of allocation.

Automatically - All at once: Only available if the amount of required reviews is set higher than 1. With this allocation option, students will be assigned all the reviews they'll have to complete at once. The advantage of this is that students will see all their peers at once. The disadvantage is that it allows for less flexibility, i.e. if students only complete 1 review, the others can no longer be assigned to.

Anonymity Enabling this option will make reviewers anonymous. Reviewers will still see the name of the peer they are reviewing. Teachers can also see the name of the reviewer.

Visibility Choose when the students can see their feedback. You can set this to 'instantly', 'after release date', a 'certain date' or 'never'.

Guiding students (optional) If you have specific hand-in instructions for your students (such as the desired font, line spacing, naming the file, etc.) fill them in here. Example: Please name your student number in the file-name. Upload both your essay and the slides you will use when presenting about your essay.

Step 4: Received reviews

You could set a deadline for this step. Students can view the feedback after the deadline has passed, but not for points (if there are points to be earned in this section). If no deadline is set, students can always view the feedback for points.

Step 5: Reflect on activity (optional)

Writing a reflection is a valuable step to end an assignment with. The student can for instance write a reflection on how the whole process of giving feedback went. This step can be added through clicking on the purple-circle-plus-button (at the end of the final step). The option of ‘Reflect on activity’ will be then visible (see images below).

In the image below, you can see that it can have a deadline, as well as a required length of words. There is also a description field in which you can specify what you want students to reflect on regarding the assignment. Students can start with this step when they completed step 3 ‘Give feedback to your peers’.

Grading

Moreover, you can add grading to your assignment by clicking on the purple plus button on your left. You can configure how many points do you want to give to each process of the assignment like in the following screenshot. Finally, click Publish in the top-right corner of the screen.

If you want to change the settings of the assignment, you can open the assignment. Within the FeedbackFruits environment, you will see three dots at the top right corner of the assignments. If you click on it and then on ‘Edit’, you will be able to edit the assignment again. Some settings cannot be changed when students have made progress with the assignment. When you’ve finished editing the assignment, click on save at the top right.

This concludes the Setting up Peer Review tutorial.
If you have any questions or experience a technical issue, please contact our friendly support team by clicking on the blue chat button (Note: support is available 24h every weekday & unavailable on the weekend).


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