Peer Grading

Peer grading lets students evaluate each other's assignment submissions instead of (or in addition to) you grading them yourself. It's a powerful tool for large classes, writing-heavy courses, and any situation where reading other people's work helps students improve their own.

When peer grading is a good fit

• Large classes where you can't grade every submission yourself
• Writing assignments where seeing different approaches teaches structure and style
• Project-based work where peer feedback uncovers blind spots
• Rubric-driven assignments where the rubric makes scoring objective enough to delegate

It's a poor fit for assignments with subjective standards no rubric can capture, or in tiny classes where there isn't a quorum of reviewers per submission.

Enabling peer review on an assignment

In the assignment editor, scroll to the Peer assessment section:

How auto-assignment works

When a student submits a peer-assessed assignment, the system automatically:

1. Holds the submission until enough other students have submitted (so there's a pool to draw reviewers from)
2. Picks reviewers from that pool, avoiding self-review and trying to balance workload across the class
3. Creates a PeerReview row for each reviewer with status PENDING
4. Sends each reviewer a Peer review assigned notification

Reviewers see new assignments in their Peer Reviews queue at /peer-reviews.

What students see

Reviewers open a peer review and see:

• The original assignment instructions
• The submission's text content and any uploaded files — but never the author's name
• The rubric (if set) with input fields for each criterion, or a single score box otherwise
• A Feedback textarea for written comments
• Three actions: Save draft, Submit review, Flag as inappropriate

A small "Anonymous review" badge sits in the top-right reminding them that the author can't see who reviewed them.

When all reviewers complete their reviews, the original student gets an Assignment graded notification with the aggregate score and combined feedback.

Anonymity guarantees

The system goes to deliberate lengths to keep reviewers anonymous to authors:

• The API never sends the author's name or ID to the reviewer
• The reviewer's name is never sent to the author
• The instructor's moderation view shows both names (so you can resolve disputes)
• The flag flow tells reviewers their name will be shared with you if they raise a concern

Instructor moderation

You retain full visibility and control. Open any peer-assessed assignment and click Peer reviews in the actions menu — or hit the API at GET /api/assignments/[id]/peer-reviews — to see:

• Every assigned reviewer (with names — for moderation)
• Each reviewer's status: pending, submitted, or flagged
• The aggregate score per submission and the spread across reviewers
• Reviews flagged as inappropriate, with the reviewer's reason

You can:

• Override any aggregate score with your own grade
• Reassign a stalled review to a different student
• Discard a flagged review so it doesn't pull the aggregate down
• Add your own comments on top of the peer feedback before the student sees the final grade

Tips

• Pair peer review with a clear rubric. Subjective scoring without a rubric leads to wide variance and student frustration.
• Set 2-3 reviewers per submission. One reviewer is too unreliable; four is too much work for the class.
• Add a writing prompt for the feedback box. "Call out one strength and one concrete suggestion" produces better feedback than a blank textarea.
• Spot-check before publishing scores. The first time you run peer review, look at the spread before letting the aggregate become the official grade.
• Tell students upfront. Knowing they'll be reviewed by classmates raises the bar for their own work.

Related

• Creating quizzes and grading
• Peer reviews (student view) — what reviewers experience
• Rubrics — how to build the rubric peer reviewers will use