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This guide provides information on the PeerWork activity for Moodle. PeerWork enables students to rate their peers' performance on group projects or assignments.

A common complaint from students working on group assignments is that all students receive the same grade regardless of the amount of individual effort or contribution.

The PeerWork activity addresses this by allowing teachers to grade the students' final output, but also for a percentage of the marks to be distributed based on peer assessment of students' contribution to the assignment.

PeerWork combines group submission with peer grading, allowing students to submit their group assignment and assess the other group members' performance. In order to use PeerWork, you must have groups set up within your Moodle space. See the guide on Moodle groups for help setting them up.

More information on PeerWork is available at Moodle Docs.Link opens in a new window

Using PeerWork

1. Add PeerWork via the Add an activity or resource menu and name it and use the Description field to provide students with instructions or advice on peer assessment.
2. Decide on the Peer assessment settings you would like to apply. These include whether to enable self-assessment, whether to apply a penalty for students who do not participate in the peer assessment and what percentage of the final grade you would like the peer ratings to comprise.
3. In Assessment criteria settings, choose the visibility of the peer grades to the students, whether you require them to justify their ratings with text comments and whether you want students to be able to see their peer scores and comments.
4. Add your peer assessment criteria and choose the 'scoring type' - the scale which you would like students to use to rate their peers' performance.
   
   Currently it is only possible to use 'standard' grading scales i.e. those which are created at the Moodle site level, and not ones that you have created at a course/space level. There is a simple 5-point Likert scale available. If you have a bespoke scale you would like to be added to Moodle, please email it to.moodle@warwick.ac.uk for consideration.
5. Ensure that your groups are set up in Participants and that you select the correct grouping in Common module settings.
6. Save the PeerWork activity.
7. Students are then able to submit their work, if required, and begin their self and/or peer assessment.
8. Students rate their peers for each criterion (required). Students can leave feedback comments (if enabled).
9. Grade the group assignment.
10. PeerWork then calculates the grade each individual student receives. The final individual grade is based on the teacher grade, peer ratings and the weighting given to the peer assessment.
11. You can adjust weightings on a per group basis and override any individual grades if necessary.
12. Release grades ensuring all students receive their grades at the same time. You can export grades for an individual group or the entire cohort as a csv file.

Watch this demo on how to set up and use PeerWork: