Peer Reviews

[avouzoun]

Students will need to work on a group project in groups of 4 and review the work of their team members. I do not want the students to be able to see the names of the students that gave them a review. However, I want them to be able to see in Canvas the names of the students they need to review. How can I set this up in Canvas? Currently, I can use the anonymous feature which does not allow my students to see the names of the students they need to review and they cannot see the reviews of their peers. 

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello @avouzoun 

Thank you for contacting the Canvas Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with anonymous peer reviews. Thanks for explaining what you are looking for - the short answer is you'll need to manually tell the students via announcement, private group message, group announcement, etc. Basically if you have an assignment (or discussion) set up for peer reviews - it either displays the names or it's completely anonymous. Unfortunately, there is no in-between. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-peer-review-assignments-in-a-course...

However, some things to consider - do the students all know who are in their groups of 4? Presuming they do, you can let the students know that they will be reviewing a particular student, but still keeping it anonymous for the one receiving the review to not know who actually reviewed them. This would require messaging done on your part if you want the reviewer to know exactly who they are reviewing, but the one receiving it to not know who did the review. It isn't necessarily ideal, but it is  an option if that is very important. Essentially though, it is either anonymous or not. It is a good  idea to have the option and feel free to check out our Ideas Conversation forum as we implement great ideas such as this that we find within the community. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/idb-p/ideas   

[hesspe]

Knowing that I'm venturing into "Who ask you?!" territory, my feeling is that a single-blind peer review would come with potential fairness and integrity issues, and I would rather not see that option in Canvas.

[jmgallimore]

Maybe I am "unthinking" it but why not have people include their names on their papers and use the anonymous peer review setting? The reviewer would know who they are reviewing because the person that wrote the paper would have their name on their paper. But the person receiving feedback would not know who provided the feedback because Canvas makes this anonymous.