Setting up Peer Review

Peer review is a powerful way to engage students in meaningful feedback and collaborative learning. In Canvas, you can easily set up peer reviews for assignments, allowing students to evaluate each other’s work based on your criteria. Whether you want reviews to be assigned automatically or manually, this article will guide you through the steps to configure peer review settings.

If you need assistance creating an assignment, please follow this article first.

To add peer review, click on the checkbox beside "Require Peer Review"

More options will appear:

Selecting "Manually Assign Peer Reviews" means that the instructor will choose who each person will peer review.

Selecting "Automatically Assign Peer Review", Canvas will automatically assign peer reviews.

Selecting "Peer Reviews Appear Anonymously" can be selected for either of the above, so students do not know who is reviewing their work.

Be sure to save your settings within the assignments.

Automatically Assigning Peer Reviews

If you select ""Automatically Assign Peer Review", you need to set how many peer reviews each student should complete and when to assign the peer review.*

*Please note, automatic peer reviews will only assign reviews to students that have already submitted. If a student submits past the "Assign Reviews" or the due date (if kept blank), you will need to manually assign those students reviews and manually assign a student to review the work of the student who turned it in late. 

Manually Assigning Peer Reviews

To assign the peer reviews, click on the assignment:

Click on "Peer Reviews" on the right hand side of the screen:

Below the name of the students, click the "Add" link:

Select a student in the dropdown box:

Click on a name and then click "Add":

If a student has completed a review, a checkmark will appear by their name. If there is an exclamation mark next to the reviewers name, a review has yet to be made.

Planning note: Many instructors want students to have time to review the feedback of a peer review before turning in a final product. This can be managed in a few ways:

1. Make the "Peer Review" an assignment of it's own. You can decide if students receive points counted toward their grade or select the option "Do not count this assignment towards the final grade". This is helpful because students can look at the feedback and submit their final product to a new assignment submission spot. 

2. Have students submit another attempt on the assignment after they receive their feedback. You can see both attempts on the same spot on Speedgrader and can see potential changes they have made to their work.