Peer Evaluations Made Easy!

Peer Evaluations Made Easy!

Do you use individual or group projects in your courses?  Do you incorporate peer and self-evaluations?  Are you looking for an easier way to manage the evaluation process?  Then Peergrade may be just the solution!

Peer evaluations are a great way to engage students in the learning process but are often difficult to manage and produce less than helpful feedback. Peergrade is an online application that can simplify and improve the peer evaluation process.  It can also reinforce valuable workplace skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and constructive feedback.

Peergrade allows the instructor to create an online assignment link that includes a grading rubric. Students can then upload their assignments before the due date.  Once the assignment link closes, the submitted assignments are randomly and automatically distributed for review to other students in the class.  Assigned reviewers provide anonymous feedback based on the grading rubric.  The instructor knows who the reviewers are, but their classmates do not.  To ensure the quality of the feedback and improve the learning experience, students rate the feedback they received.  This allows the reviewers and the instructor to know if the feedback provided was helpful or not.  Self-evaluations and instructor evaluations are also possible.  Markus and I both use peer, instructor and self-evaluations in our courses.  Peergrade just helps to streamline the process.

Peergrade is fully customizable for individual or group submissions.  It also has an easy rubric creator if you need this type of assistance.  Additionally, Peergrade includes pedagogical assistance features for instructors, including tutorials, videos, research articles and personal assistance.  Best of all, Peergrade provides data driven insight into the effectiveness of your assignments, rubrics and student learning.

Peergrade has a free version of the application which allows the instructor to implement it in an unlimited number of classes and assignments.  Peergrade can also accept any type of uploaded file that the instructor allows.  Limitations of the free version involve the file size.  The free version is restricted to 50 MG per file. Paid versions of the application are also available for individual instructors and institutions.  The institutional option easily integrates with most Learning Management Systems (LMS).

If you are looking for a better way to involve your students in creating fair and useful evaluations for your projects or assignments, consider Peergrade.  To learn more about how to get started with Peergrade or to set up your free account, visit https://www.peergrade.io/ and watch the brief video.

© 2018 Teaching and Learning Toolbox