This term, we will be using Kritik, a peer-to-peer learning and evaluation platform. It is an engaging and gamified web platform that helps you develop your critical thinking skills according to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Summary

  • A peer grading service that makes evaluation part of the learning experience.
  • See an expanded answer to the Piazza discussions about Kritik.
  • Assignments will mostly be graded in Kritik this term. That means students will grade each other based on a strict grading rubric, and compared against the grading patterns of the Prof and TAs. Student assignment grade will be composed of
    • evaluation of your answers to the assignment questions,
    • evaluation of your feedback and grading for 4-5 other student assignments
    • feedback you provide to the anonymous graders of your assignments
  • Cost: $24 per student
  • Benefits:
    • TAs and Prof will be able to spend more time helping with concepts, rather than grading hundreds of assignments.
    • Students will “learn by teaching” in the explanations they give to the assignments they evaluate.
    • Students get a better context for what grades mean and get to see other submissions from across their peers.

Each Kritik activity has 3 unique stages:

  • Stage 1: Create → Follow the instructions, read the provided rubric and create a submission
  • Stage 2: Evaluate → Anonymously score your peers based on a rubric, and provide constructive written comments
  • Stage 3: Feedback → Provide peer evaluators anonymous feedback on how motivational/critical their comments were

Grading Mechanics

When you participate in Kritik activities, you will receive 3 scores: a Creation score, an Evaluation score and a Participation score. Together, these will add up to your total assignment grades of your final course mark. To understand what these scores mean and exactly how they are calculated, please read the section How Scoring Works in Kritik’s help center.

Note that your history of grading “accuracy” from the Asg 0 calibration activity, and from normal assignment grading, will continue to be calculated and impact your grading weight, the influence your grading has on the outcome of assignments you grade. But this weighting itself does not effect your own grade, that will come purely from your accuracy.

Grading Advice

Grading your peers is probably something entirely new for most of you. We appreciate your openness to trying something new, we think you’ll learn and grow a lot from the experience.

Some tips to grade more accurately and get that portion of the grade:

  • You can look at your calibration activity and see how your grading different from the Prof’s default grading. Note, that even that grade is “perfect”, in hindsight it was probably too generous to student #2, but it’s a baseline to start from.
  • If you ended up with a very low weighting after asg0 because you gave very low scores, try being more generous in your grading approach.
  • If you ended up with a very low weighting after asg0 because you gave very high scores, try being discerning in your grading approach.
  • The grading rubric is a guide to finding the right level for the different criteria for an assignment. Note that a grade of X or zero stars usually means the measured criteria was entirely absent. So for citing references or labelling diagrams, this score of zero means there were no references at all! Or that all the figures had no labels at all! Consider carefully when you give the lowest possible score or 1 star, whether this really matches what was handed in.
  • Similarly, for giving the maximum grade for a criteria, consider whether they really did go above and beyond and satisfy that task in the way requested.
  • Before you start assigning grades, take a look at all the creations you have been given to see the range of quality and work.
  • Try not to focus entirely on picky details only.

Registration/Support

An email invitation will be sent to your school email account that contains the link to register for a Kritik account and enroll in the course. You MUST use your university email to sign up in order to access the course. If you did not receive any email yet, please contact Kritik using the live chat button on their website.

How to get help: If you have any questions about Kritik, please use the live chat on the Kritik Website. A human agent will respond promptly within a few minutes during business hours. You can also visit Kritik’s help center which should address any questions you have about the platform.

Welcome to Kritik!

(Student Instructional Video)