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Professor Elizabeth Golliher is an English professor at Old Dominion University who has scaffolded learning while implementing peer review to guide her students through the learning objectives and ensure they receive the support and personalized feedback they need to succeed.
Continue reading for highlights of our conversation and visit this link to watch the full recording of the workshop with Professor Golliher.
“Using Kritik has made my class much more conversational and Kritik has really opened up the idea of peer review being a stilted one off thing but more of a conversation where the students can actually grow and learn in a more organic way.”
How have you done peer assessment prior to using Kritik?
Having implemented peer review both with and without using Kritik, we asked Professor Golliher what differences she experienced and how Kritik helped her manage and get the most out of the peer review process..
“It used to be a nightmare for me to manage because I would assign them to peer review each other and then I would have people dropping out and flaking and not leaving in-depth assessments at all. Kritik is the highest level of the peer review experience that I have ever seen and it’s been absolutely invaluable to me.”
A key element to set your students up for success is to ensure that the rubrics you make are clear with the desired learning outcomes. In Kritik, professors use customizable rubrics to set the learning objectives and to ensure that the critique and feedback that’s given is based on assignment expectations.
“When students don’t perform well in English, it’s often because they don’t understand what their professor wants. The rubric is as close to a right answer as you can get and the students can see specifically what they’re grading for.”
How does scaffolding assignments through peer learning help both professors and students?
Scaffolding is the process of breaking down large assignments into smaller sections so that students have checkpoints to understand and receive feedback on how well they’re demonstrating their knowledge and applying it. When students reach the end of the course, or turn in the larger cumulative assignment they can feel confident in the work they are turning in because they received feedback throughout the process.
“Before I started using Kritik, it was always so time consuming for me to have to read so many low stakes assignments and offer feedback. I didn’t have time to read all of the little essays but if they start going off track now, it’s just gonna blow up later and they’re going to be like I wish you had told me.”
Combining scaffolding and peer review means professors have a system to set students up with personalized feedback - even with the lower stakes activities. Additionally, it provides valuable learning opportunities for students to engage with their peers, gain different perspectives and reflect on their own understanding through grading their peers’ work.
“They can review each other. It’s not too much pressure on me to do all the grading myself and they can see what each other are doing. I never thought how useful it would be to also see how the students are grading each other.”
For professors who have implemented peer review before, how should they approach Kritik as a platform?
“The main problem with peer review [manually] is receiving assessment that may or may not be helpful and then the dialogue would be over and your peer review would be done. I started integrating [Kritik] into my class and it was a really seamless transition because I could just use the rubrics I already had.”
As Professor Golliher said, incorporating peer learning, or implementing more low stakes assignments to scaffold the learning doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Kritik helps professors seamlessly transition to peer learning with templated rubrics, an AI system that pairs students anonymously and ensures students are graded fairly and accurately, and a structure to keep students on track and accountable.
If you’re interested in exploring how you can transition to a peer assessment platform that takes the burden off your hands, book a demo of Kritik with our team here!
