Number of Peer Assessors

A peer graded assignment will normally have around 3 to 8 peer assessors. That is, in the peer grading phase, each student will be asked to grade this number of pieces of work from the other students in the class. The larger the assignment is, in terms of content, the smaller this number should be, else the grading burden on the students becomes onerous. However, each student should see sufficient examples to gain an insight into what constitutes a good piece of work and a poor piece of work. Further for the grading performance of a student to be assessed meaningfully the greater the number of peer gradings the better. This performance is unlikely to be valid if only three or four gradings are done by each student.

Provided there is enough pieces of work submitted (actually 10 or more), the system will allocate each student at least one "good" and at least one "poor" piece of work. However, this can only be done if the teacher has graded the pieces of work BEORE the allocation of (peer) grading work is done. The teacher does NOT, however, have to grade all the pieces of work, a sample is sufficient. Further, the teacher's gradings need NOT be the final gradings, a preliminary grading is good enough. Note, however, that if the option to show teacher's gradings is turned on, these gradings will be shown to the students at the end of the submission phase.

The number of peer assesors can be zero. In which case the assignment becomes either a self-graded assignment if that option is turned on, or a normal teacher-graded assignment.