Canvas@Illinois, Peer review for instructors

Learn how to create and use the updated peer review functionality (with the Peer Review Allocation & Grading feature option) in your Canvas courses in assignments and discussions.

A peer review assignment enables students to provide feedback on another student's assignment submission, allowing communication between students and provides additional opportunities for students to learn from each other. Canvas has an updated peer review experience (with the Peer Review Allocation & Grading feature option) that you can implement in your class. There are many benefits to the new peer review feature but it's important to review the Important considerations section to make sure it will work for your course. If you would prefer not to use the Peer Review Allocation & Grading feature option at this time, refer to the Revert to the original/legacy peer review experience section.

The Peer Review Allocation & Grading feature option is enabled by default but requires 2 additional feature options to also be enabled (see the Required feature options for updated peer review experience section below).

Select a heading below to expand each section and learn more.

Required feature options for updated peer review experience

For the new peer review experience to work in your course, you must have the following feature options enabled in your course site (default states are noted in parentheses):

Peer Review Allocation and Grading (enabled by default)
Assignment Enhancements - Student (not enabled by default)
Enhanced Rubrics (enabled by default)

To check if these feature options are enabled in your course site:

Select Settings in your course navigation menu.
Select the Feature Options tab.
Confirm that each of the 3 required feature options are enabled with a green circle and checkmark.
- If any of the feature options have a red "x" next to it, select the red "x" and then choose "Enabled" from the drop down.

Important considerations

Before implementing the updated peer review experience in your course, please review the list of current limitations:

Peer reviews are automatically and dynamically assigned (as long as a student submits before the available until date), but instructors do not currently have access to view a page to see who is assigned to review which students. Currently, the only way to view this information with the new peer review feature is through looking at individual submissions.
Peer review is not supported in the Canvas mobile app (Canvas Student or Canvas Teacher).
Cross-group reviews are not automatically supported (for example, Group A reviewing Group B), but they can be set up manually using Allocation Rules.
Peer review settings cannot be copied or sent when using "Copy To" or "Send To."
Peer review settings are not included when using Course Copy/copying your course for the next semester.
CSV import and export are not available for peer review assignment settings (these must be manually configured).
Peer review settings are not supported in Blueprint courses.
Anonymous grading is not available for peer review sub-assignments.
Peer reviews are not supported in Grade by Student within SpeedGrader.

Revert to the original/legacy peer review experience

If the updated peer review experience will not work for your course, you can disable the "Peer Review Allocation and Grading" feature option so you can continue to use the legacy peer review experience.

To disable the Peer Review Allocation and Grading feature option:

In your course navigation menu, select Settings.
Select the Feature Options tab.
Select the green check mark next to the "Peer Review Allocation & Grading" option; then select Disabled from the menu that appears.

After making this change, you can return to your peer review assignment page and edit the peer review settings as usual.

For more information about the original/legacy peer review experience, see the following resources: