Create a Self and Peer Assessment
Topic Overview
The Self and Peer Assessment tool enables students to review and evaluate work submitted by themselves or their peers. Using criteria specified by the instructor and optional sample responses, students can assign points and provide feedback on submitted assignments. These assessments can help distribute the workload and ensure that students receive feedback from several individuals. Students also benefit from the analytical experience of evaluating submissions against defined criteria. The evaluation process itself often deepens their comprehension of the subject and can provide valuable insights into their own efforts.
Self and Peer Assessment allows you to create an exercise composed of one or more questions, each with one or more criteria, to be presented for completion and evaluation. These tests, along with their questions and criteria, can be exported and then imported for later use.
Questions provide structure and content to the assessment. They are simple ("What is 2 plus 2?") or complex ("Describe the main reason for the fall of the Roman Empire.").
The criteria accompanying each question provide the means to evaluate the responses to those questions. The number or criteria can also range from one ("Did the answer = 4?") to many:
- Does the response place the issue within the broader context of the subject?
- Is the response well organized and clearly laid out?
- Was the response proofread carefully? Was it free of significant grammatical, spelling, or typographical errors?
The Self and Peer Assessment process begins by creating a new Assessment. Assessments can be created from any of the content areas within a Course.
Use the Instructions field to provide clear instructions and other information that may be helpful in completing the Assessment.
Steps
Date Ranges
There are three date ranges that are necessary to the successful creation and deployment of an Assessment: Display After/Until, Submission Start/End and Evaluation Start/End. They are described in the following table.
Date Range
Description
Display After/Until | The date range which the Assessment is available to Students. |
Submission Start/End | The date range which Students can submit answers to an Assessment. |
Evaluation Start/End | The date range which Students can submit evaluations of their peers' work on the Assessment as well as their own (if Self Evaluations are enabled). |
Create a New Self/Peer Assessment
To create a new Assessment, follow these steps:
- Enter a Content Area section.
- Click on Assessments.
- Select Self and Peer Assessment from the Select drop-down menu.
Enter a name for the Assessment in the Name field. At this point, a new column in the Grade Center is created with the same name.
Enter instructions for the Assessment in the Instructions Text Editor.
- Use the Text Editor to reference any Content System files (optional).
- Set the Submission Start Date and Submission End Date by using the date and time fields.
- Set the Start Date and End Date for the self or peer evaluations by using the date and time fields. The Start Date for self or peer evaluations must occur after the Submission End Date.
- Allow Anonymous Evaluations by clicking the Yes radio button. Click No to disallow.
- Allow Self Evaluations by clicking the Yes radio button. Click No to disallow.
Allow Submitters to view their own Evaluation Results by clicking the Yes radio button next to Show Evaluation Results to Submitter. Click No to disallow.
Define how many of their peers' Assessments each student is expected to evaluate in the Number of Submissions to Evaluate field.
The number entered in the Number of Submissions to Evaluate field does not include the creator of the Assessment. Specify 0 submissions to evaluate if this assessment is only for self-evaluation.
- Select a Due Date for the Self/Peer Assessment by clicking on the box and entering the Due Date, if desired.
- Make the Assessment available by clicking the Yes radio button. Click No to make it unavailable.
- Track the number of views by clicking the Yes radio button. Click No to disable tracking.
- Click the Display After and/or Display Until check boxes to control when the content is available.
- Set the date and time restrictions for the attached content by using the date and time fields under Display After or Display Until.
- Click Submit.
Create Self/Peer Assessment Questions
- Once the assessment is created, you will be brought to the Assessment Canvas.
- Click Create Question.
- Enter the question in the Text Editor. The question can be complex and open-ended, or simple and closed-ended.
- Provide a Model Response (optional). A Model Response allows evaluators (self or peer) to compare submitted answers to an exemplary response. The model response can be made available at any time, but it will only be visible during the evaluation process, after the submission process has ended.
- Click Submit.
- To add Criteria to the question, click on the drop-down arrow next to the question and click Criteria.
- Choose Create Criteria or Word Count Criteria. Criteria will only be visible during the evaluation process, after the submission process has ended. One or more criteria can be added to each question.
- Create Criteria allows you to enter custom criteria and requirements to be used during the evaluation.
- Enter Criteria in the text editor, and choose the number of points possible. Allow Feedback to Users will explain the points allocated for this criteria when evaluating a submission.
- Word Count Criteria allows you to specify a recommended word count along with allowed variation to be used during evaluation.
- Click Submit when all of your desired settings have been entered.
- Your question along with the set criteria will appear. Click OK to return to the Assessment Canvas.
- Add additional questions with criteria by repeating this process.