what is peer graded assignment in coursera

Center for Teaching

Getting to know coursera: peer assessments.

Posted by Rhett Mcdaniel on Monday, January 7, 2013 in Commentary .

by Katie McEwen, graduate assistant

The answer, for Coursera at least, is other students.  And while peer assessments have garnered a fair bit of attention , they’ve also quickly enough underscored some of the more pervasive, and truly difficult, issues faced by the Coursera model .  Plagiarism is perhaps only the most obvious one.  Peer assessments—the ways they work, they ways they don’t—raise serious issues about creating and cultivating community online; navigating questions of authority  and language proficiency; and about grading as a reflective practice.

Laura Gibbs, an experienced teacher of online courses, provides a thoughtful response to her own experience with peer feedback in the recent “Fantasy and Science Fiction” class on her blog Coursera Fantasy .  There, she also addresses some of deeply problematic aspects of grading in Coursera.

Unlike automatically graded quizzes and programming assignments, peer assessments require a good-faith effort on the part of each student not only to submit original work in the proper format and the proper language (still largely English), but also to then anonymously evaluate the work of others attentively and constructively.  So for each assignment submitted in a course, students are generally then asked to evaluate the work of up to 4 or 5 peers.  That’s not a negligible amount of work or time, especially in those courses with weekly or every-other-week peer-assessed assignments.

For example, students are asked to write short essays in “A History of the World since 1300;” or work through a series of project briefs in “Human-Computer Interaction;” participate in assignments and design challenges in “Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society;” or formulate final projects for “Introduction to Sustainability.”  David Owens, a professor at Vanderbilt’s Graduate School of Management, will try out group projects in his upcoming Coursera course on “Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations.”

As we can see, peer assessment is a part of the course requirements for a wide spectrum Coursera courses across disciplines, not just those dedicated to literature.  In fact, of the 50 Coursera courses opened between June to October 2012, 14 (or 28%) required at least one peer-graded assessment.  And four of those 14 courses required only peer-graded assessments, with some unexpected titles in the mix: “Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act,” “Fantasy and Science Fiction,” “A History of the World since 1300,” and “Computer Architecture.”

Given this, it’s important to keep in mind that feedback on Coursera is anonymous.  That means you don’t know whose work you’re reviewing or who’s reviewed your work.  This makes any actual discussion of the feedback essentially impossible.  Want to follow up on a comment?  Or continue the discussion?  Not easy in a class of 50,000.  “Modern and Contemporary American Poetry” gets around this structural problem by asking students to post their completed and graded essays in the forum (in addition to the peer-assessment system) for more feedback and more engaging discussion.

But already, this question of anonymity in Coursera—which protects privacy while making it impossible to ask questions, or engage in a direct conversation, about the feedback—points to larger issues of how privacy and pedagogy intersect online.  How do we create sustainable online learning communities in Coursera if students are not accountable to their peers or for their feedback?

And when are students supposed to learn how to grade?

It generally seems that the piece most often missing in peer assessments is not good-faith effort on the part of most students to submit and evaluate work.  Rather, it’s that many (or even most) students simply do not have experience in evaluating the work of others.  And how could they?  While some courses offer peer-assessment training, this doesn’t seem to have yet bridged the skill gap.  So what are students really getting from this peer feedback?  Is it helping them to write better essays or to create more complex projects?

Part of the problem is, of course, that grading is difficult no matter the medium: online or face-to-face, seminar or lecture.  Neither is it a problem limited to students: many instructors likewise lack formal training in evaluating student work.

And, here, we run up against another unspoken assumption at work in Coursera: that grading is a relatively transparent, relatively straightforward process that can be “learned” quickly enough and well enough to be effective online.  To guide students, Coursera encourages instructors to develop detailed rubrics for evaluation.  Coursera also presents some limited data suggesting that their rubrics have improved over time.  This data , or rather the conclusions drawn from it, is far from conclusive.  It could be that it is the students’ ability to grade effectively improves over time, or even that only the more dedicated and skilled students continue to participate in peer grading.

Certainly, I don’t doubt the value of peer grading.  Nor do I doubt the ability of some, perhaps even many, Coursera students to grade effectively and insightfully.  I do, however, doubt that this is what actually happens in Coursera.  And initial anecdotal evidence — drawn from my own research into common practices in Coursera, as well as the experiences of others (see here , here , here , and the comments here ) — would seem to indicate that it is not.

Because as we know, grading is often one of the most difficult aspects of teaching.  It is a reflective practice, like any other we undertake in the classroom, changing over time, and requiring dedication, energy, and engagement.  Ideally, it would also include a commitment to helping others learn and improve.  How do we work to cultivate this kind of community culture online?  And what might we need to do differently to facilitate community online?

The real sticking point, for me, isn’t simply the issue of students grading effectively or ineffectively online.  Rather, it’s that Coursera doesn’t quite acknowledge that there is an implicit pedagogy or ideology at work on the platform.  Which suggests that grading is work to be outsourced, that the division of academic labor operating in most large university programs in the US, like those where the Coursera founders work—in which professors teach, graduate students (or machines) grade—is one worthy of replication online.

By thus separating expertise and grading, Coursera would seem to rely on an impoverished conception of grading, which privileges international perspectives over expert critique.  The model of peer assessment supported by Coursera folds together two assumptions: that peers can approximate or replace the kinds of substantive, constructive expert feedback critical to deeper understanding and that a grade is necessary to learn, full stop.  Even when credit is not granted .

So although there is no shortage of innovative projects assigned in Coursera courses, which ask students to apply and expand their knowledge in exciting, creative, and challenging ways, there is still a lack of sustained conversation around what grading, or peer assessment, means in this online environment.

Next time, we’ll continue our discussion to take a look at one outcome of grading in Coursera: certification.

Image: “ Score Cards ,” Marcus Hodges, Flickr (CC)

Tags: Coursera

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Help Articles

How to edit and re-submit a peer-graded assignment, learner help center jul 31, 2023 • knowledge, article details.

If you want to make changes to a peer-graded assignment after you submit it, you can edit and resubmit your assignment. You should only resubmit a peer-graded assignment before your personalized deadline.

If you don't pass a peer-reviewed assignment:

• You can re-submit the assignment to be graded again
• If the deadline has passed, you might not get peer reviews
• If you've already completed peer reviews for other people's assignments, you won't need to do them again

What happens when you resubmit a peer-graded assignment

When you resubmit a peer-graded assignment, peer reviews and grades for your first submission will be deleted.

If you resubmit after your personalized deadline, you might not get feedback from your peers, and your assignment will be marked Didn't Pass. Learn how to solve problems with peer-graded assignments

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Edit and resubmit

To edit and resubmit a peer-graded assignment:

• Open the course you want to resubmit an assignment in.
• Click the Grades tab.
• Open the assignment you want to resubmit.
• Click Edit submission at the bottom of the submission page.
• If you have already gotten feedback, you'll need to confirm your choice to edit your project. Editing the assignment will delete any reviews you've already gotten.
• Make your changes, then click Preview to see the changes.
• Click Submit for review to resubmit your edited project.
• You can confirm that your updated assignment has been resubmitted by going to the GRADES page where the assignment will be marked as Submitted.

I can’t submit my assignment

If you can’t submit your assignment, make sure that your answers are all over the minimum word limit. Make sure to submit responses in full sentences so your peers are able to review your assignment.

You may not be able to submit your assignment if your answers are too similar to another learner’s submission. Please keep in mind that plagiarism is against the Coursera Honor Code. 

If you see a notification letting you know that your assignment answers are similar to another learner’s submission, you’ll need to update your response before submitting. 

Once you’ve updated your answers with original work, the Submit for review button will appear.

If you need more time to work on your assignment, you can click Save draft and come back to it later.

If you think you shouldn’t be seeing this error, you can click the link below the notification to let us know. You’ll be able to submit your assignment after you edit your answers.

If you aren’t seeing any error messages, but are still not able to submit your assignment, try these troubleshooting steps.

Attempt limits for peer-graded assignments

Some private courses (such as courses in a Degree or MasterTrack program) may have a limit on how many times you can submit a peer-graded assignment.

If there's an attempt limit for your assignment, you'll see an 'Attempts' section listed near the top of the page when you open the assignment.

If you meet the attempt limit and need help with your grade, you can reach out to your program support team. You can find your dedicated support email address in the onboarding course for your program.

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