Peer assessment involves students evaluating each other’s work against defined assessment criteria. Canvas supports this activity through its Peer Review feature, which enables structured peer feedback within online assignments.
Benefits: What the tool does
Peer reviews encourage a collaborative learning environment by allowing students to engage with the learning outcomes, understand assessment criteria, provide constructive feedback, and reflect on their own work.
The Canvas Peer Review tool:
- Allows students to submit work through a Canvas assignment.
- Allows students to review peers’ work and provide feedback.
- Enables students to receive both peer feedback and instructor feedback on their submissions.
- Allows staff to enable anonymous peer reviews, ensuring students cannot see either the names of the peers they are reviewing or the identities of those providing feedback.
- Allows staff to assign peer reviews either automatically (randomly) or manually.
- Enables staff to adjust review allocations by adding or removing reviewers as needed.
- Allows staff to monitor the completion status of individual peer reviews.
- Enables staff to provide instructor feedback and moderate rubric scores before grades are released.
- Supports feedback through rubrics, comments, file attachments, and in-line annotations (unavailable for anonymous peer reviews).
Limitations: What the tool doesn’t do
When using the Canvas Peer Review tool, staff cannot:
- Upload review allocations (for example, via CSV import). Reviews can only be assigned automatically (randomly) or manually, which may be difficult to manage at scale.
- Export or download the list of assigned allocations.
- Export or bulk-download peer feedback, including completed rubrics.
- Control when peer assignment comments or in-line annotations are released. This feedback becomes visible immediately, even if grades have not yet been posted.
- Filter the Gradebook to quickly see who’s completed their reviews and track any outstanding reviews. Completion status can only be viewed within the assignment’s Peer Reviews area. This may be difficult to manage for large cohorts.
- Rely upon the built-in reminder feature to prompt students to complete assigned peer reviews. Staff should use alternative communication methods to remind students of outstanding review tasks.
When using the Canvas Peer Review tool, students cannot:
- Edit or delete peer review feedback once it has been submitted via a rubric or a comment.
- Complete a self-review of their own submission.
Guidance
The guides below explain how to set up, monitor, and complete peer reviews effectively.