You can use the VIULearn discussion tool to set up peer feedback activities. Depending on your goals, you can use an open discussion or a group discussion in VIULearn.
Choosing the right Dicussion type
Use an open Discussion topic if you want everyone in the course to see and review every project. This works best when students need to view many different projects and leave a few quick comments on each. Open discussion is the default when creating a Discussion.
Use a group Discussion topic to ensure every student receives detailed feedback. This method breaks the class into smaller groups where students only see a few of their peers' projects. By limiting the number of posts, you prevent students from feeling overwhelmed. Limiting how many submissions students respond to encourages more thoughtful and in-depth suggestions.
- From the course navigation bar, select Communication and then Groups.
- Click the New Category button.
- Give your Category a name (For example Peer Feedback Groups).
- Underneath the Enrolment Type heading, select an enrolment type
- Groups of # is best if you want to randomly sort your students into groups of a specific size
- # of Groups is best if you want to randomly sort your students into a set number of groups
- # of Groups - No Auto Enrolment is best if you want to manually assign students to groups
- Depending on which enrolment type you chose, enter either the number of groups you want to create or the number of students you want in each group in the box provided.
- Under the Additional Options heading, check the box for Set up discussion area.
- Choose the forum where you want to place your peer feedback discussion topic.
- Select Create New Topic.
- Click the blue Save button.
- Choose whether you want to use a single topic (default) or a separate topic per group (learn more about these choices here).
- Give your discussion topic a title (required) and description (optional).
- Click Create and Next to create your discussion and move on, or Add Another to create a second group topic.
- Click Done.
If you used an automatic enrolment group type, you will want to review your group enrolment to ensure that all groups have an appropriate number of students. You can check the group enrolments and manually adjust enrolments from the groups tool.
Peer feedback done in Discussions will be open, with students able to see their peers' feedback on their own work and the work of their peers. If you want to do private, anonymous peer feedback we suggest using iPeer. If you gave not used iPeer in the past, email learnsupport@viu.ca to request an account.