Peer assessment provides benefits to the receiving student as well as the student providing the feedback. Students generally experience peer assessment as a non-threatening process that benefits their learning by providing suggestions from their peers about how to improve their work and by helping them understand the criteria that will be used for the summative assessment of their work (Wood & Kurzel, 2008). As students construct knowledge and produce artifacts to showcase their learning, constructive feedback can serve as a guide to help them develop an improved end product.

The benefits of incorporating peer assessment into an online course are numerous. Student learning is improved as they take increased ownership of their education. Furthermore, when students know that their peers will review their work, it can empower them to take responsibility for, and manage, their own learning. The practice of critically evaluating another person’s work employs numerous higher-order thinking skills. In addition, students are better able to assess their own work, and ascertain what they don’t know, when they can see and consider the array of methods made evident to them during peer assessment. The ability to assess one’s own work is a valuable skill that can be used throughout life.

Strategies for including peer assessment in your course:

• When including peer assessment in your course, it’s important to make clear to your students why you are using peer assessment and how it will impact their learning. By stating a purpose for incorporating the tool, you add relevance to the assignment, which will increase student motivation.
• When developing activities that will be used for peer assessment, instructors should establish detailed and precise criteria and standards for how student work will be evaluated. Similar to developing a rubric, peer assessment criteria should use specific language that gives students consistent benchmarks for which to assess the qualities of their peers’ work.
• Instructors should allow students to practice using peer assessment on a structured low-stakes assignment prior to it being used to measure high-stakes summative assessments. This will accustom students to exposing their work to more public scrutiny, giving them safe opportunities to improve their performance using informal feedback while developing their competence as assessors (Lutze-Mann, 2015).
• Before employing peer assessment in courses, instructors need to make sure that their students have abundant knowledge and are sufficiently equipped to make educated decisions about the work of their peers.
• Breakdown more complicated assignments into several smaller chunks to be assessed individually and then allow students to revise their work based on commentary from their peers. This assists in supporting the importance of peer assessment as part of a greater knowledge development system.

A Peer Review tool is available in Canvas. This tool allows students to review and assess work submitted by themselves or their classmates. To begin using the Peer Review tool, the instructor will need to develop the assessment; this includes developing the scoring criteria for the assignment rubric that the students will use to peer review their classmates. The students will use these criteria to assign points and provide feedback on their colleagues’ assignments. Once the assessment process has begun, the instructor can review submissions, student evaluations, and the results. The rubric score is used for an assessment opinion only; instructors must review the assignment and assign the final grade. The best method for giving points for a peer review is to create a “no submission” assignment then provide a collective grade for the reviews.

Another common outlet to organize peer assessment within Canvas courses is the Discussion tool. Instead of having students submit their work as an Assignment, instructors can require the submission through a discussion board. He or she can preassign partners for peer review or simply require students to provide feedback to at least two of their peers within the discussion board. One additional consideration for instructors is that they can require students to submit their initial post before they are able to view and assess the work of their peers. This can be adjusted within the settings for the discussion board activity.

There are many advantages to using peer assessment in an online course. It’s a tool that can have a substantial impact on student learning and development. Peer assessment encourages participation and interactivity between students while increasing motivation through active learning. If you are interested in using peer and self assessment in your course, please contact your Instructional Designer for assistance.