Introduction

Peer reviews are a tool that can help students master the concepts of a course by learning from each other. This page includes resources to help you learn more about using the sometimes complex peer review option available in Canvas.

Learn about peer reviews in Canvas

Read the following tutorial for an introduction to peer review assignments in Canvas, and see the details below for some general information to keep in mind if you choose to use the peer review option:

What is a peer review assignment?

Requiring Peer Reviews for an Assignment

Only assignments using the "online" submission type can be peer reviewed.
Peer reviews can be assigned to students automatically or manually.
Even if you select the option to automatically assign peer reviews, you will still need to manually click a button on the peer review screen in order to distribute the peer review assignments to the students.
If you choose the option to make peer reviews anonymous, peer reviewers will not have the option to annotate the submission using Crocodoc.
Due dates for peer reviews can be confusing for students. See the instructions in the "create a peer review" section of this page for more details.

Grading Peer Reviews

Students cannot automatically receive a grade for completing a peer review. If you want to assign points for completing peer reviews, you can create a separate "no submission" assignment in the Gradebook, and use it assign points manually.
When you grade a student's assignment using the SpeedGrader, all peer review comments from peer reviewers will appear in the comments sidebar and the rubric (if the assignment has a rubric). Crocodoc annotations from peer reviewers will also appear on screen in the SpeedGrader window.

Create a peer review assignment

To create an assignment that includes peer reviews, follow along with this tutorial, but also note the specific list of steps below for more information:

How do I create a peer review Assignment?

Steps for Creating an Assignment with Required Peer Reviews

Due dates for peer reviews can be confusing for your students. To address this issue, follow the steps below when creating an assignment that will require peer reviews:

Create an assignment with a due date.
Select the option to require peer reviews and set them to be assigned automatically.
Choose the number of reviews to assign to each student.
Set the peer review due date for a date after the assignment due date (at least a week after the initial due date is preferred).
Wait until the assignment due date has passed.
After the assignment due date has passed, open the assignment’s peer reviews screen and click the "Automatically Assign Peer Reviews" button. Anyone who submitted an assignment will automatically be assigned a peer review, and the due date for submitting the peer review will appear on their dashboard.

Help your students learn how to complete peer reviews

Peer Review Information for Students

If students have been assigned to complete a peer review, they will be able to access it from their dashboard.
To complete a peer review, students must review the assignment and leave a comment on the submission details page.
If the assignment includes a rubric, students must use the rubric before the peer review will be considered complete.
If the peer review is anonymous, students will not have access to the document annotation tools in Canvas.

We recommend providing the following text and/or video tutorials to your students to help them learn the necessary steps for completing and submitting a peer review:

How do I submit a peer review to an assignment?

Peer Reviews - students (4 mins)

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