We recently ran our E-learning Enhanced: Using Turnitin for Peer Assessment training session and wanted to highlight the different tools that are available for Peer Assessment across our Digital Education Platform.

Peer Assessment activities have several benefits to students:

• Allow students to invest in and manage their own learning
• Shared learning experiences
• Reflect on learning
• Consider communication and constructing feedback
• Develop conversation and collaboration skills
• Improve academic achievement
• Share responsibility for learning
• Develop employability skills around feedback
• In group scenarios, identify participants’ contributions
• Quick feedback
• Building a learning community

For Liu & Carless (2006), “peer assessment and peer feedback … enables students to take an active role in the management of their own learning” (280). 

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, we recommend:

Liu, N.-F. & Carless, D. (2006) Peer feedback: the learning element of peer assessment. Teaching in higher education. [Online] 11 (3), 279–290.

Lynch, R., Mannix McNamara, P. & Seery, N. (2012) Promoting deep learning in a teacher education programme through self- and peer-assessment and feedback, European Journal of Teacher Education, 35:2, 179-197, DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2011.643396

Zhu, Q. & Carless, D. (2018) Dialogue within peer feedback processes: clarification and negotiation of meaning. Higher education research and development. [Online] 37 (4), 883–897.

We have several peer assessment tools that are available:

Blackboard Assignment for Peer Assignments

You can add a Rubric to the assignment – student will see this as part of their submission.

Workflow

1. Create Assignment and set Peer Settings (see Peer Review for Qualitative Peer Assessments)
2. Students submit their work as normal (see Blackboard web site)
3. After Due date and time has passed, students review submissions see Blackboard web site
4. After the Peer Review Due Date, staff complete marking (see Blackboard web site)
5. Student view staff feedback, peer feedback and final mark

Note that:

1. Students won’t be allocated any reviews if not enough assignments are submitted.
2. Late submissions will be allocated to students. Late submission is allowed automatically as part of the peer assessment process.
3. Students do not see any names as part of the review process. You should advise all students not to include personal information on their documents.
4. Students can provide written feedback in the review process but can’t assign a mark (unless this is included in the text feedback box)
5. You can add a Rubric to the assignment – student will see this as part of their submission and can refer to it while reviewing. However, they can’t use it to mark work.
6. You can hide peer reviews if you feel the content isn’t appropriate

Turnitin PeerMark

Workflow

1. Create a Turnitin Assignment and enable PeerMark
2. Go back into Turnitin Assignment to set up Peer Mark Settings
3. Students submit to Turnitin submission point
4. After PeerMark start date, students are able to view another student’s assignment and leave feedback / scores to questions
5. PeerMark feedback is visible to students immediately
6. Lecturer needs to allocate a final mark manually

Guidance:

Overview of PeerMark: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/instructor/peermark/about-peermark-assignments.htm

Creating a PeerMark Assignment: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/instructor/peermark/creating-a-peermark-assignment.htm

Student guidance on Using PeerMark: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/turnitin-website/student/student-category.htm#peermark

Discussions

Discussions are available in every course in Blackboard – these are a great way for students to engage asynchronously with their peers; they can post comments and respond to each others’ posts.

Workflow

1. Instructor creates a Discussion
2. Students contribute to the Discussion
3. Students respond to other Discussion posts

For further advice on creating discussions, please see below for Blackboard guidance:

• Create Discussions
• Grade Discussions
• Group Discussions

Journals

Workflow

1. Instructor creates a Journal (private between instructor and student)
2. Students reflect weekly on their contributions to project
3. Instructor has overview and monitors
4. Can be used for students to give an idea on group contributions throughout process of peers

Create Journals: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Interact/Journals

Guidelines for students

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1469787416654794 – contains guidance for students. Suggests providing a session for students on how to write feedback.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2019.1697424

“For peer review in the classroom to be effective, there is clear evidence that the process needs structure, clear and accessible assessment criteria and appropriate scaffolding sessions for students (Mangelsdorf Citation1992).”

https://www.ctl.ox.ac.uk/peer-feedback – includes some useful questions and prompts that could be used to structure feedback.

• https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/2/2404/7_steps_to_Peer_and_Self_Assessment.pdf
• https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/digitaldiscovery/2020/08/07/a-student-guide-to-peer-feedback/
• https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/peerreview/tips.html

Peer feedback has been used widely within group assessment work, for example, when it comes to ascertaining student participation, and factoring in group contributions. For an example of a group peer marksheet, see this sample template from Carnegie Mellon University.

Our Academy Forum handout on Peer Assessment provides further information and Aberystwyth University Case Studies.