How to use Group Peer Review tool for staff

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 others’ 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

To enable this activity, please send a request to the TEL team including the name and  URL of the Moodle course where you want to use the activity.

Moodle Group Peer Review Calculation [PPT Download] and example Group Peer Review workbook [.xlsx download] (You will need to be signed into office.com with your abc123@bath.ac.uk email address)

Before you set up your activity, take a look at the guidance on Peer Assessment, including some top tips and case studies. 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. You can also link to our student peer assessment FAQs

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 the 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.

Once you have sent a request for the tool to be enabled on your course, and set up a group assignment submission point

1. Turn editing on
2. Go to the bottom of the chosen topic in your course
3. Choose Add activity or resource
4. Select Group Peer Review from the list of Activities
5. Don’t forget to review the Student instructions and amend them to include details of your marking criteria.

When you have added your Group peer review activity, enter an appropriate Name for the activity. You will need to review and edit the student instructions. An example is included. Update this description to reflect the marking criteria for your activity. Students will follow these guidelines when completing the peer review.

When setting up your Group Peer Review, select the group assignment submission point you want to link the activity to. You can select from a drop down list. Only assignments with group submission enabled will appear in the list.

You will need to set the Peer review weighting. This determines how much weighting will be given in the overall mark to the peer review marks, in relation to the group assignment submission mark given by the assessor.

If you select 20% then the final mark would comprise of:

80% of the group mark set by the marker PLUS 20% of the academic mark to be scaled by peer review.

You can also set the Maximum peer rating which determines the maximum mark students will be able to give to each other, for example marks out of 5, or marks out of 100.

You should choose whether you want students to self-assess their contribution to the group or not.

Note: you may wish to hide the group assignment submission point from student view while marking and the peer review activity take place. Go to the assignment grading window in your group assignment submission point. You can mark the assignment and record feedback for the group in the Grading window. When you have entered grades and feedback for one member of the group, choose the option to Apply grades and feedback to entire group.

When you have saved the grades and feedback for the entire group, you will see the marks and feedback recorded against all group members in the grading window.

Students can choose a mark for each member of their group from the maximum peer rating you have set. Note that the Criteria for Peer Assessment which you have included in the description will appear for students above the peer review screen. They can enter comments for each member of their group. They will not see the marks or comments entered by other members of their group. When complete they can Save their reviews. They can return to edit this screen while the activity is in progress.

First go to the Group Peer Review activity, and select View responses

As the activity progresses you can monitor student participation in the Completion summary window. This shows the number of expected responses, the number of actual responses, and will confirm once grades have been published to the gradebook at the end of the activity.

Below the completion summary, you can view the marks and feedback comments submitted by individual students. Select from the drop down list to filter by group.

You can view the marks assigned by each student to their peers, and any feedback comments they have entered.

You can adjust the final mark before saving the final marks to the gradebook (for example to apply a penalty for late submission). The final mark will be saved to the gradebook and will be visible to the student. You can still see the original calculated mark below the final mark for your reference.

Once students have saved their ratings for their peers, you will see the weighted group mark and the weighted peer mark, and a calculated final mark.

If needed you can adjust the final mark before saving it to the gradebook. It is best to give clear information to students in advance about whether peer marks may be adjusted by the tutor, and under what circumstances.

Once your review is complete, you will need to Save these final marks to the gradebook. This step must be completed separately for each group. Once the final marks are saved to the gradebook, they will be visible to students.

Note: You make choose to to Hide the Group Peer Review activity in the activity settings while you complete the review, and make it Visible to students afterwards once all the grades are saved. This will ensure marks are only visible to students after they have been reviewed and saved for every group.

You can keep track of which grades have been saved to the gradebook in the completion summary.

Once you have saved the final marks to the gradebook, students will be able to see their individual final mark by going back in to the Peer Review Activity.

Note: You make choose to to Hide the Group Peer Review activity in the activity settings while you complete the review, and make it Visible to students afterwards once all the grades are saved. This will ensure marks are only visible to students after they have been reviewed and saved for every group.

For advice on using the Group Peer Review activity to enhance learning, teaching and assessment contact the TEL team: tel@bath.ac.uk