Learn more about peer and self evaluations in Cadmus Group Assessments
This guide will help you understand our new Peer & Self-Evaluation feature, a tool designed to bring fairness, transparency, and accountability to group assessments. By empowering students to assess their own contributions and those of their teammates, we aim to provide you with a holistic view of group dynamics and individual effort.
What the Feature Is
The Peer & Self-Evaluation feature is a structured system for student-driven feedback. It allows students to assess themselves and their peers using instructions and rubrics you provide, moving beyond traditional group grades and offering a detailed look at individual contributions. This tool is designed to foster student accountability, as students know their contributions will be evaluated by their teammates, which encourages them to take ownership of their role and responsibilities. The insights gathered from these evaluations also provide valuable data for you as the instructor, which you can use to identify high/low performers and understand the internal workings of a group.
How It Works
You can create and customise the evaluation. You'll define the instructions, rules, and tips for effective peer and self-evaluations, and can also include a rubric to guide students. Once you publish it, students will be prompted to complete the evaluation alongside their group project submission. The students complete their peer evaluations individually and anonymously. This ensures candid feedback without the pressure of in-person discussions, providing you with unfiltered insights into group dynamics. The system then aggregates the student responses, giving you a comprehensive overview of each student's performance from their own and their peers' perspectives.
What We're Trying to Achieve
Our goal is to make grading group work more equitable by bringing fairness and transparency to the process. By collecting feedback from multiple perspectives—the student, their peers, and you—the final grade can more accurately reflect each student's effort and contribution. We also aim to help students develop practical skills for the real world. Peer feedback is a cornerstone of professional environments. By introducing this process in the classroom, we're helping students develop critical skills, such as providing and receiving constructive criticism, reflecting on their own performance, and engaging in respectful critique. We want to move beyond a single group grade and provide instructors with a more complete picture.
