Canvas Peer Review Activities

Incorporating Peer review is as an optional setting in Canvas assignments and graded discussions. Peer review activities are an excellent way for students engage with and provide feedback to one another.

When Require peer reviews option is enabled on the activity editing page, more settings become available.

To complete a peer review, students must review the assignment and leave a comment. Students cannot view previously submitted comments by any other reviewers, including comments by TAs or other instructors.

Assigning peers

Assignment submissions can be assigned to peers for review either manually or automatically. 

Manual peer assignment

The instructor or TAs can designate student submissions for review by their peers. 

How do I manually assign peer reviews for an assignment?

Automatic peer assignment

Instructor can designate how many reviews are assigned to each student.

For group assignments and group discussions, an additional option is available: Allow intra-group peer reviews. If this option is not selected, Canvas will exclude members of the same group when assigning peers. By selecting the checkbox, reviews can be assigned randomly to all members of the course, including members of the same group.

How do I automatically assign peer reviews for an assignment?

Anonymous reviews

Anonymous reviews are only available for assignments. Peer reviews cannot be enabled on anonymous, ungraded discussions.

Even when anonymous reviews are enabled, some grading features don’t support anonymity, such as DocViewer annotations. The instructor and TAs can view the names of anonymous reviewers in SpeedGrader and the submission page.

Grading

Instructors and TAs can review peer comments on the submission page as well as in SpeedGrader. Completed rubrics can be viewed individually on the submission page. The rubric score is used for an assessment opinion only. The instructor or TA must review the assignment and assign the final grade.

How do I view student peer review comments as an instructor?

Resources and Next Steps

How do I use peer review assignments in a course?

How do I create a peer review assignment?