Create

To add a Peer & Self Evaluation activity to your design, just drag and drop the activity in the authoring canvas and double click on it to set it up.

Peer & Self Evaluation Content

Peer & Self Evaluation Authoring

Title

• Defines the name of the activity as seen by students. Use a clear and meaningful title, e.g. “Team Contribution Evaluation”.

Instructions

• Provide guidance to students on how to complete the evaluation.
• This is critical to ensure students:

  • Understand the criteria
  • Know what is expected
  • Provide constructive and honest feedback

Rating Criteria

This is the core of the activity, where you define how students will evaluate peers and themselves. You can add multiple criteria using different evaluation methods.

There are 5 different evaluation types you can use:

1. Star rating (Likert scale)
2. Ranking
3. Points Distribution
4. Comments (Qualitative)
5. Rubrics

Educational Value of Peer Evaluation (Tips for Effective Use)

• Make the self-evaluation component explicit Encourage students to honestly reflect on their own contribution, not just rate others
• Discuss discrepancies openly Differences between self and peer ratings can spark valuable discussion and insight
• Use clear, behaviour-based criteria Focus on observable aspects like preparation, participation, and collaboration
• Start simple Begin with rating scales, then introduce more nuanced or hybrid approaches
• Encourage constructive feedback Provide guidance on how to give specific, actionable comments
• Consider anonymity where appropriate This can improve honesty in peer ratings
• Use results as a learning opportunity Highlight patterns such as:

  • Overestimation or underestimation of self-performance
  • Strong or weak team dynamics
• Apply it consistently across activities This builds trust, fairness, and student confidence in the process

Star rating (Likert scale)

• Allows students to rate peers using a scale (e.g. 1–5 stars).
• Ideal for quick, intuitive evaluations.

Options:

• Criterion name: Define what is being evaluated (e.g. Participation, Preparation)
• Minimum number of ratings: Require a minimum number of peers to rate
• Maximum number of ratings: Limit how many peers can be rated
• Allow students to comment on other students: Adds a qualitative feedback layer alongside the rating

Use when: You want a simple and scalable evaluation method, especially for large cohorts.

Ranking

• Students rank peers relative to one another (e.g. best to least contribution).

Options:

• Criterion name: e.g. Overall contribution
• Rank limit:

  • ALL: Rank all peers
  • Or limit ranking to a subset

Use when: You want to force differentiation between students.

Points Distribution

• Students allocate a fixed number of points across peers, based on contribution.
• This is one of the most powerful accountability mechanisms.

Options:

• Criterion name
• Points to distribute: Total points available (e.g. 10)
• Scale:

  • Total: the points to distribute form a fixed pool for the whole group, regardless of group size (e.g. 10 points split among everyone).
  • Per student in group: the pool is multiplied by the number of students (e.g. 10 points × 4 students = 40 points to distribute).
• Ask for justification:

  • Require students to explain their allocation
• Minimum words in justification:

  • Enforces depth and quality of reflection

Use when: You need clear differentiation and accountability, especially in graded group work.

Comments (Qualitative)

• Students provide written feedback on peers.

Options:

• Minimum / maximum number of comments
• Minimum word count:

  • Encourages meaningful and detailed feedback

Use when: You want to develop reflection and feedback skills.

Rubrics

• Allows you to define structured, criteria-based evaluation grids.

Options:

• Max score: Defines the scoring range
• Column headers: Performance levels (e.g. Poor → Excellent)
• Row headers: Criteria (e.g. Communication, Collaboration)
• Column content: Descriptions for each level

Use when: You need clear, standardised, and transparent evaluation criteria.

Advanced Settings

Review Options (Feedback after completion)

Control what students can see after completing the evaluation.

• Feedback they provided

  • Students can review their own submitted evaluations
• Feedback they received

  • Students can see how peers evaluated them
• Maximum number of reviews

  • Limits how many evaluations a student can complete
  • Particularly relevant for Star Rating criteria

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Self Assessment

• Allow self review

  • Enables self-evaluation using the same criteria as peer evaluation

This is a key feature, as it:

• Encourages reflection
• Allows comparison between self-perception and peer perception

SPA & SAPA Factors

When you use Peer & Self Evaluation, LAMS can generate SPA and SAPA factors to help you interpret results in a fair, structured, and meaningful way.

The SPA factor is a fairness adjustment score that reflects how much each team member contributed to a group task, based on the ratings given by their peers and their own self-assessment.

The SAPA factor compares how a student rates themselves versus how their peers rate them.

What is the SPA Factor? (Student Performance Adjustment)

The SPA factor is a fairness adjustment score that reflects how much each student contributed to the group, based on:

• Peer ratings
• Self-evaluation
• The overall distribution of scores within the team

What does it actually do?

It helps you:

• Differentiate individual contribution within group work
• Adjust marks fairly, so stronger contributors are recognised
• Identify under- or over-contributors

How to interpret it

• SPA > 1.0 → The student contributed more than the team average
• SPA = 1.0 → The student contributed at the expected level
• SPA < 1.0 → The student contributed less than the team average

In practice, you can use SPA to scale individual grades from a group mark.

Why it matters

Without SPA, group work often leads to:

• Free-riding
• Unfair grade distribution

With SPA, you introduce accountability and fairness, making contributions visible and measurable.

What is the SAPA Factor? (Self vs Peer Assessment Alignment)

The SAPA factor compares:

How a student rates themselves vs how their peers rate them

What does it reveal?

It gives you insight into a student’s self-awareness and perception accuracy.

How to interpret it

• SAPA ≈ 1.0 → The student’s self-assessment is aligned with peer perception
• SAPA > 1.0 → The student rates themselves higher than their peers do
• SAPA < 1.0 → The student rates themselves lower than their peers do

Why it matters

SAPA helps you identify:

• Overconfidence (inflated self-perception)
• Underconfidence (students undervaluing their contribution)
• Mismatch in perception, which can indicate:

  • Lack of awareness
  • Communication issues within the team
  • Misunderstanding of expectations

SPA vs SAPA , What’s the difference?

• SPA = Contribution (fairness and grading)
• SAPA = Self-awareness (reflection and development)

👉 Think of it this way:

• SPA tells you “how much did this student contribute?”
• SAPA tells you “how accurately does this student understand their own contribution?”

How you can use these in your teaching

Use SPA to:

• Adjust individual marks in group assessments
• Identify imbalanced team contributions
• Support fair grading decisions

Use SAPA to:

• Prompt reflective discussions
• Develop professional self-awareness
• Identify students who may need:

  • Feedback on expectations
  • Support with confidence or engagement

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Rubrics Settings (Advanced)

• Student rubrics view

  • Defines how students see rubric evaluations (e.g. by student)
• Require evaluation for all peers

  • Prevents students from skipping evaluations
• Add in-between columns in rubrics

  • Adds more granular performance levels, improving clarity and consistency

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End of Activity

• Lock when finished

  • Prevents students from editing their evaluations after submission
  • Important for maintaining assessment integrity

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Learning Outcomes

Mapping learning outcomes to activities is very useful for curriculum mapping.

Add learning outcomes to the activity

As with all activities in LAMS, you can map your learning outcomes to this activity. If you want to add a learning outcome, just search for the particular outcome or type a new one it will be added to your list of learning outcomes for the future.

You can search Learning Outcomes by code or name.