Introduction
In this article we will walk you through how to use Group Member Evaluation from the perspective of a teacher.
If you’d like more information on how this tool works, you can check out the overview article here:
Tool In Action
Accessibility
We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners - to read more about accessibility in FeedbackFruits tools, check this article: Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.
Overall Student Progress
At the top of the assignment, you will see the Overall student progress overview. Click on statistics per active student to see individual students' progress. Here, you can view their overall grade, whether students have read the instructions, and the statuses of both the reviews they've given and received.
Fig. 1: Overall student progress: Active assignment
Click on the headers in each column to change the order (ascending or descending) in which students are displayed. You can also click Fullscreen to pop out the full display of student progress.
Fig. 2: Full screen statistics per active student analytics
The check marks under read instructions mean that the student has finished the step. The light green dot means the student has not read the instructions yet.
Under the Given Reviews and Received Reviews headers, you will find the completion status of each review for each student. If a student has completed the module, it will display ✔ Completed instead of a percentage.
It is also possible to export all the student data into an excel file. This file contains information concerning review ratings, review comments and grading. You can download this export by clicking on the EXPORT ANALYTICS button in the overall student progress window.
Step 1: Instructions
Instructions: Setting Up
Here, you can see the instructions written when setting up the assignment. These can be changed by clicking on Edit on the top right corner of the screen.
Fig. 3: Instruction: Setting up
Collaboration Options
Directly underneath the instructions, you can select options for student collaboration.
Fig. 4: Student collaboration options
When selecting student collaboration options, there are several configurations to choose from. Please bear in mind that collaboration options need to be selected before students participate in the assignment - once a student makes progress, the configurations can't be updated.
Fig. 5: Collaboration options expanded
Options for how students are evaluated:
Individually
As a group
Options for students evaluate:
Individually. Students will individually get assigned to anyone.
Within groups. Students individually get assigned someone within their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ option for hand in is chosen).
Outside of their group. Students individually get assigned to someone, not in their group. (Disabled if ‘as a group’ option for hand in is chosen).
As a group. All members of a group get assigned the same work. (Disabled if ‘individually’ option for hand in is chosen).
For more information on configuring groups when using FeedbackFruits within Blackboard, Brightspace or Canvas, click here. If it's not possible to sync the groups within your LMS or if you are using the platform, you can find more information about how to create groups here.
Instructions: Active Assignment
Here, you can view the instructions you wrote while setting up the assignment. You can edit them by clicking on the Edit button in the top right corner of the screen.
Fig. 6: Instruction: Active assignment
Step 2: Given Reviews
Given Reviews: Setting Up
In this step, you can specify criteria to help guide students as they give feedback. Click configure to edit, add, or delete criteria. Click here for a detailed guide on setting criteria.
Fig. 7: Given reviews: Setting up options
Required number of peers to review: Specify how many peers/groups each student has to review. Reviewing multiple peers is good practice, giving students a broader view of how their peers did in the assignment. At the same time, it means that students get reviewed by several peers, giving a better, more nuanced view of their own efforts.
Self-assessment: Students are able to review their own work before reviewing their peers.
Automatic outlier detection: To enable Analytics to detect outliers in group ratings and identify students of interest.
Note: to enable automatic outlier detection, you should configure the following:
Fig. 8: Rules to enable automatic outlier detection
Scheduling deadlines: Set the deadline for giving feedback. Note that reviewers will not be able to view or edit their reviews after this deadline passes. Leave the deadline blank to allow reviewers to view and/or edit their feedback indefinitely.
Allocations: By clicking change you will be able to select your preferred method of allocation. If you set this to all, students will have to review everybody in their group - it's important to be mindful of the student workload when using this setting.
Fig. 9: Allocation method options
Automatically - One by one: The students will be assigned a review one by one, the second review will appear after starting the first one, and so on. This is the default and recommended method of allocation.
Automatically - All at once: Only available if the amount of required reviews is set higher than 1. With this allocation option, students will be assigned all the reviews they'll have to complete at once. The advantage of this is that students will see all their peers at once. The disadvantage is that it allows for less flexibility, i.e. if students only complete 1 review, the others can no longer be assigned to.
Manually: You get to assign all the allocations manually.
Students choose to review: Students get to select the peer or group they want to review.
Anonymity: Enabling this option will make reviewers anonymous. Reviewers will still see the name of the peer they are reviewing. Teachers can also see the name of the reviewer.
Visibility: Choose when the students can see their feedback. You can set this to instantly, after release date, a certain date or never.
Guiding students (optional): If you have specific hand-in instructions for your students (such as the desired font, line spacing, naming the file, etc.) fill them in here.
Here, you can also enable Feedback writing tips, which automatically display one tip at a time as students write feedback. Additionally, there's a Review checklist that is shown to students during the review process, and a Feedback coach that provides AI-powered, real-time feedback to help students improve their reviews.
Fig. 10: Guiding students dropdown
Given Reviews: Active Assignment
In this step, you can access an overview of all provided feedback. The reviews in this step display the feedback provided by the student.
The star icon at the top of the overview shows what percentage of the grade is taken from this section of the assignment.
Fig. 11: Given reviews: Active assignment
Exploring the Overview
Students who have begun giving feedback to their peer will reflected in this step. We'll take you through each area, one by one.
Headers:
Clicking on the headers will change the order (ascending or descending) in which the students are shown.
Fig. 12: Header
Progress Bar:
Directly above the student breakdown, you can see a progress bar. This shows the students who have not started, have partial progress, have mostly completed, or have completed the assignment.
Fig. 13: Student progress bar
You can use the magnifying glass icon to search for a particular student or group name. The three dots next to fullscreen icon allows you to filter to show ratings per criterion or show ratings on reviews.
Clicking on any of the colors (or the progress chips underneath the bar itself) will change the groups and students portrayed accordingly - in this example, we have clicked on mostly completed:
Fig. 14: Selecting by the progress chip
To view more information on student & group progress on one screen, you can click full screen next to the progress bar to pop out the analytics screen.
Fig. 15: Analytics full screen
Keywords:
You can filter by keywords mentioned by students in their reviews to see reviews with a common theme.
Fig. 16: Keywords
In this example, clicking on the work keyword pops up the overview of all reviews where the word work was mentioned - you can see the reviewer, the reviewee, and the criteria the review fell under.
Fig. 17: Filtering the keywords
Show Allocations:
Coming back to the overview - clicking on Show Allocations brings up a pop up, displaying the work assigned to each group & group member for review.
Fig. 18: Location of show allocations
Within the pop up, you can click on the arrows next to each group to expand their assignments. You can also see the assignment collaboration type listed at the top.
Fig. 19: Student allocations overview
Show Ratings:
Click on Show Ratings to see a heatmap displaying the assessments given by the students.
Fig. 20: Show ratings
Within the heatmap, you can see student ratings per rubric set filtered on the top bar by their given reviews, self assessment and feedback-on-feedback.
Fig. 21: Ratings overview
Clicking on insights on any particular rubrics criteria will pull up a contribution filter - you can filter for common keywords per review.
Fig. 22: Insights
In this example, clicking on good will show all of the reviews where good was mentioned and for which criteria.
Fig. 23: Filtering keywords
Full screen offers a wider display for easier view. You may also leverage the Search capabilities to search for individual students.
View Reviews:
The reviews in this step display the feedback provided by the student. View Reviews navigates you to the given reviews playlist, where you can start viewing individual review packets. You may also navigate to a specific student review by hovering over the student’s name in the table below.
Fig. 24: View reviews
After clicking view reviews, you'll be taken to the first student overview. This is a full overview of all of the feedback this student has given. You can also see their ratings per rubric section.
Fig. 25: Viewing reviews
At the top of the page you can see the student name, their group, and can switch between the different review feedback the student has given per person.
Fig. 26: How to switch different review feedback
The page is divided into two sections - provide feedback and feedback-on-feedback. Provide feedback is an agglomeration of the students' given reviews, separated into rubric groups - feedback-on-feedback is their given review of the feedback they have received from their peers.
For each rubric section in provide feedback, you can see which rating was given by the student in their self review, as indicated by the self text and icon underneath.
Fig. 27: Providing feedback
You can also hover over the ratings to view what ratings the student has given and to whom.
Fig. 28: Hover over the ratings
If the student has left comments, you can also click on the comments icon on the bottom left to view them. Their self review comments are denoted by the self review icon.
Fig. 29: Comments
In the feedback-on-feedback section, you can check the ratings a student has given of the feedback they received. If the student has not yet rated the feedback they received, or if the feedback-on-feedback module is not enabled, this will show as blank.
Fig. 30: Feedback-on-feedback
Once you're satisfied with the current review page, click Next either at the bottom of the page or in the top right to move on to the next student.
Fig. 31: Next button
You can tab between previous and next reviews at any point by clicking previous or next in the top right - here you can also see which page of reviews you are on (in this example, 2 out of 17):
Fig. 32: Preview or Next button located on the upper right corner
Step 3: Received Reviews and Feedback-on-Feedback
Received Reviews: Setting Up
In step 3, You can choose to enable or disable the option for students to provide feedback on the feedback they received. Here, you can also set a deadline. Keep in mind that if a deadline was set in the previous step, this step will only become available once the previous step's deadline has passed.
Fig. 33: Received reviews and feedback-on-feedback setting up
Received Reviews: Active Assignment
The Received Reviews section of the active assignment offers an overview of students in this step. It displays their overall progress, average review rating, self-assessment rating, outliers (if enabled), and more. To view the full analytics of received reviews, please click on full screen.
Fig. 33: Received reviews overview
Fig. 34: Analytics in full screen view
To view a student's review, hover over their name and click on it. This will direct you to the same page as their submitted review, where you can see the criteria and feedback they provided.
Giving Feedback As a Teacher:
Within a student's received reviews overview, change the show feedback given by filter to your name in order to leave your review for the student.
Fig. 35: Giving feedback as a teacher
Step 4: Reflections (Optional)
Reflections: Setting Up
If you want your students to reflect on the outcomes of the activity and their learning, this is where they will do so. When setting up this step, you can specify the required length of the written reflection, with a minimum of 1 word and a maximum of 5000 words.
You can also set a deadline for when students must complete their reflection and enable features like the Reflection Coach, which provides AI-powered, real-time feedback to help students improve their reflections. This option is available under the Guiding Students section.
However, please note that this step is optional. If you decide that student reflections are unnecessary, you can remove this step by clicking the X button in the top right corner.
Fig. 36: Reflection: Setting up
Reflections: Active assignment
In this section, you can view an overview of all student-written reflections. Writing a reflection is an important step in concluding an assignment. For example, students can reflect on their experience throughout the feedback process. If the teacher has enabled this option in the settings, these reflections will be visible in an overview in step 4.
Fig. 37: Reflection: Active assignment
Students can write their reflections after providing feedback to their peers, regardless of whether they have completed the Received Review step. You can click on view reflections to see an overview of all reflections left by students.
Step 5: Grading
Grading: Setting up
After finishing setting up the core of the assignment, it is possible to add the configurable grading module. Click here to learn more about how this grading module works.
Fig. 38: Grading: Setting up
You also have the option to publish the grade either as a percentage or as pass/fail, and you can choose whether to enable the Group Contribution Grading feature.
Fig. 39: Grading options
For more information on how to configure this feature, please check this article :
Grading: Active Assignment
In the active assignment, you can access a comprehensive overview detailing the grades of each student within the system.
If the teacher has included grading in the settings, it will be visible after the last step. The image below shows what that will look like.
Fig. 40: Grading: Active assignment
By clicking on the arrow on the right or using the scroll bar at the bottom, the teacher can view the rest of the grade sections (from left to right). On the far right there is also an optional grade adjustment. This allows the teacher to add or subtract points for each student. Click on Fullscreen to get a better view.
Good to Know
Anonymity: If anonymity is enabled, the students work under a pseudonym, but the teacher can always see the student name.