Overview of Group Peer Review
The Group Peer Review Moodle activity has been developed by the TEL team. It allows students to rate one another after working on a group assignment. Typically, you may want students to assess each other’s contribution to the group task, and to adjust the assignment mark for individual students, based on the assessment they receive from their peers.
The final peer assessment mark is made up of the group assignment mark scaled by an aggregated peer assessment weighting. The tool brings a simple solution for the collation and tracking, calculation and distribution of marks.
From a student view:
- Handles anonymous submission of scores and supporting justification (optional) to members of their group
- Receive their final scores
From a staff view:
- Uses group members from Moodle assignment
- Automatic calculations (handles non-submitters)
- Automatically moderates per individual if they are very generous/meagre
- Itemised downloadable reports
- Completion report of submissions and outstanding group peer submissions
- Can review student entries and override final scores before they are pushed to gradebook
How does the Moodle Group Peer Review work?
Before you start
Preparing for your group peer review activity
When briefing your students:
- Make sure students are aware of the purpose and benefits of taking part in the group peer review activity.
- Provide the assessment criteria in advance with opportunities for students to ask questions and seek clarification.
- Make deadlines clear in advance, and make sure students understand the importance of meeting deadlines within the peer review activity.
- Explain if there are penalties for non-participation.
- Provide ‘how-to’ guidance to show students how and when to upload their peer reviews. Below is a PowerPoint that you can download and tailor to help provide guidance for your students.
You will need to create Moodle groups then add students to groups.
You can choose to create your groups manually, by importing your group names or you can auto-create groups. You can assign students to groups randomly, alphabetically, manually or have the students enrol themselves.
Create groups manually
You can create groups manually, working online in Moodle. You can name the groups as you wish. This is a simple way to create a small number of groups.
Importing group names
You can import the group names from a spreadsheet created offline. You can name the groups as you wish. This can be a quicker way to create a large number of groups. Note that you cannot import student members in to their groups from a spreadsheet.
Auto-create groups
If you want Moodle to set up a specified number of groups which are named numerically (e.g. Group 1, Group 2, Group 3) or alphabetically (e.g. Group A, Group B, Group C) you can choose to auto-create groups. You can use this option to auto-create groups with a specified number of students per group. If you choose to, you can set students to be added to groups Randomly or Alphabetically.
Once you have created your groups, you can either
- manually add the students to their groups
or
- get students to add themselves to the groups using the Group Choice activity.
If you use the group choice activity, make sure you monitor sign-ups and send reminders as needed. You can manually allocate remaining students to groups if necessary.
Before you add your Group Peer Review activity, you first need to set up a assignment submission point with group submission enabled. This allows each group of students to upload a file (e.g. Word document, PowerPoint presentation) or submit online text (e.g. link to a video recording).
When you set up your Group Peer Review activity, you will link it to this group assignment submission point.
When setting up your assignment submission point, choose the appropriate group submission settings
In the assignment description, include instructions to students about how to upload their assignments. You may wish to add a link to the Group Peer Review activity once you have set it up.