Calibrated peer review

If you have spent over 20 hours grading papers or writing assignments, then you know what an automated online grading software can do. An effective online grading software should have clear grading standards from different source materials. These standards should be defined, have specified solutions, and right results.

Meanwhile, traditional grading systems involve simple software in assessing Multiple-Choice Questions or True/False. However, this is not feasible for a short answer or for student written assignments where one must assess a students' deep understanding of course concepts.

As many classrooms are being pushed to incorporate educational technology for remote teaching, why can't the same be applied for automated grading systems? Yes, an automated online grading software can free up more teaching time for professors. However, will it come at the cost of sacrificing fair grades for more biased or inaccurate grades? This is where the calibrated peer review or CPR system comes in.

How to save time grading

To solve these challenges, CPR website or solution Kritik is excited to announce our new calibration feature. This peer review program is a powerful tool built to automatically keep our online grading software more precise. It raises awareness among students regarding grading expectations for writing assignments and activities. Also, it enhances the critical thinking of students.

Rolling out Kritik’s calibration feature will be easy once it is implemented as an e-learning platform. Currently, Kritik's grading system revolves around peer grading, where students anonymously evaluate their peer's submissions through rubric-based assessments. This is what you call an anonymous peer review.

Now, with calibrated peer review, students grading close to professors’ preferences will have a higher impact when making evaluations on other submissions. Calibration essays also showcase students' writing skills in any field like science courses. Making the intro great will help the pedagogy assessment.

How does it work?

This peer review process requires a professor to select, review, and evaluate three creations of a previously finalized Kritik activity. In the review stage, students will assess the same creations and evaluate those same creations provided by the professor. It evaluates student work or student writing as text entry.

Students with the same grading provided by professors will have a higher-order calibration score. The higher the grading score the student achieves, the greater the impact they will have on future assessments of other students’ creations.

Why?

The objective here is to determine strong peer evaluators with effective for peer grading. Students who mark closely or exactly in line with the professor will demonstrate how strong their grading thinking skills are. In return, those students will be rewarded with a higher grading score. Furthermore, students with low grades or with little effort will be penalized with a lower grading score.

Tying it together

The creation score is an overall weighted average of the evaluations that a student received on their submission. Here, peer evaluators’ grading score becomes the weight. Students who increase their total grading criteria or points from the calibration activity will have a higher weight as they evaluate their peer submissions. This can be proven valuable for one’s own essay marking, lab marking, etc.

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Improve the Grading System Accuracy: This guarantees less inflated grades with the calibrated peer review. It is more than enough to administer a calibration activity once or twice throughout the term.

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Identify Key Evaluators: Students who grade closely to you indicate how well they are absorbing the context of the assignment requirements and rubric criteria. The students can be as trust-worthy as the TA's in providing effective evaluations and feedback to support their peers in the course.

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Discovering the Potential: Kritik solution enables students to establish their abilities in evaluating their consistent feedback. In large classes, well-performing students and those with high evaluation score indicate their evaluation ability. This gives professors an opportunity to identify students for TA recommendations.

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Gamification: To keep students motivated as they complete assignments, the Kritik scoring system allows students to keep track of their improvement throughout the term. Obtaining a high grading score showcases how well students are comprehending and applying course content.

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Offer more assignments: With the calibration feature in use, you can spend less time revising the grades of the students and spending more time creating Kritik assignments. With at least 6-7 Kritik activities each term, expect to notice an exponential increase in student's evaluation score.