The Self and Peer Assessment tools allows the students to become part of the grading process. Self assessment can be used to have a student grade/review their own work by following instructions set by the instructor. Peer assessment is similar but it allows students to grade/review other students work.
It is recommended that you do a test run with all your students so all participants understand how this works.
Creating a Self or Peer Assessment:
1. Open the Content Area into which you want to add the assessment.
2. Hover over Assessments and click Self and Peer Assessment.
3. Choose to create a new assessment or import a previously exported assessment.
4. Name the assessment, add instructions and set the submission start and end dates (these are the dates between which students are allowed to submit their answers).
5. Self and Peer Evaluation Options
Set the evaluation dates for when students should evaluate their or each others submissions.
Note: evaluation dates must be after the submission dates.
Allow Anonymous Evaluation: Anonymous evaluation hides the names of the submitters and the evaluators.
Allow Self Evaluation: Selecting this option allows students to evaluate their own submissions.
Show Evaluation Results to Submitter: Select this option if you wish for evaluation results to be shown to the student who submitted the assessment . If the evaluation is anonymous, submitters will not see evaluators’ names.
Number of Submissions to Evaluate: Specify the number of submissions each evaluator should evaluate. Submissions will be distributed among evaluators based on this number. If you have selected “Allow Self Evaluation” specify 0 submissions to evaluate if this assessment is only for self evaluation.
6. Set the following standard Options:
Make the assessment available: Setting this to ‘Yes’ will make the assessment available to students.
Track number of views: If you wish to keep track of the number of times that students have viewed this assignment select Yes, otherwise select No.
Choose date restrictions: You may use this option to choose when this assessment is available to students. Note that date restrictions apply to the content item itself. These are not tied to the dates for the submission and evaluation processes which have been selected in the previous step.
7. Click Submit when ready
Adding Questions
1. From the Assessment Canvas area Click on the Create Question button.
2. Fill in the details:
Question Information: Enter a question for the students to answer.
Model Response: You may want to enter a Model Response. This allows evaluators to compare the responses in the submissions to an exemplary response. Note that this model response will only be visible during the evaluation process, after the submission process has ended.
Available: To use the Model Response it must be set to available, otherwise set it to No
3. When ready click Submit.
Now that the question has been created, question criteria need to be added. This is what the students will use to evaluate and assess the submission made by their peers.
Adding Criteria
1. Hover over the question you would like to add criteria, click on the arrow icon 
next to the question title, and select Criteria
2. Click on either Create Criteria or Word Count Criteria. Word Count Criteria allows you to specify the amount of words that the answer should be.
We will click on Create Criteria for this tutorial.
3. Criteria Options:
Criteria Information: Enter criteria information in this field
Possible Points: Enter points at are available
All or Nothing: Selecting this option means that the assessor can either give the maximum points or no points at all. For example if the points possible is 2 then the assessor can give 0 or 2 points.
Partial Credit: Selecting this option means that the assessor can choose how many points out of the points possible to give. For example if the points possible is 2 then the assessor can give 0, 1 or 2 points.
Allow Feedback to User: If you select this option then the peer assessor can give reasons why they are awarding the points and this information is shown to the original student who submitted the work.
4. When ready click Submit.
5. Repeat the above process if you have more questions to add.
Adding Word Count Criteria
If an Instructor wants to evaluate the length of an answer, it is possible to add a Word Count Criteria to a question. An Instructor may specify that an answer should be around 200 words. The Word Count Criteria enables points to be awarded or deducted based on the length of an answer (for example, points deducted if the answer is not within 20 words of the 200 word maximum).
To add a Word Count Criteria, follow these steps:
1. Click on the arrow icon next to the question and select Criteria > Word Count Criteria.
2. Enter the number of Points Possible.
3. Enter the Maximum Word Count.
4. Enter the Allowed Variation.
5. Click Submit.
Previewing the Assessment
There are two ways to preview the Assessment once it has been created, by Submission or by Evaluation. These options offer the Instructor a chance to see the Assessments as their Students will. Instructors can use these preview options to fine tune the Assessment. The Preview option is available from the Assessment Canvas for the appropriate Assessment. Click the Preview button and select either Submission or Evaluation from the drop‐down list.
Submission Preview page
This page offers a complete view of the Assessment. Each question can be previewed in turn by clicking its name. Note: These pages are read only.
Evaluation Preview page
This page offers a view of all of the evaluations, regardless of their status.
Clicking an evaluation name (e.g. Example Name 0) opens the evaluation form.
In this view the evaluator can:
a) Check the Model Response
b) View the submission
c) Review the criteria for the question
d) Give feedback and assign points
Viewing the Results of the Assessment
Results can be monitored and reviewed once the submission phase has ended. Results can be downloaded as a collection or on an individual basis. Follow these steps:
To monitor the results for an assessment:
1. In the Course Management/Control Panel menu click Course Tools and select Self and Peer Assessment from the dropdown menu
2. Click on the arrow icon next to the appropriate assessment and select View Results
3. The results will be displayed
The Results page contains the following features and functions:
Assessment – name of the assessment
Submission Dates – submission start and end dates
Evaluation Dates – evaluation start and end dates
Evaluation Status – indicates is an evaluation has been completed
Student Name and Username –
Average Percentage – evaluation score as a percentage
Average Score – evaluation score
Results Sent – indicates if results have been transferred into Grade Centre
Evaluated Self – indicates if this submission was self-evaluated
Evaluators – indicates how many evaluators were assigned to evaluate the submission
Managing the results
Results can be sent to the Blackboard Grade Centre by clicking the Send Results to Grade Centre button – this will allow all of the results to be viewed by students via My Grades
Results can be downloaded in an xls format by clicking the Download All button
