We connected with Dr. Amelia Hubbard from Wright State University to talk about her experience using peer-to-peer learning with Kritik in her courses and how she found that it benefited student learning.
Watch the full workshop here, and read below to learn more about the positive impact peer evaluation can have in encouraging genuine discussion and engagement in the classroom.
What is the value of Kritik?
"[Students] rated [Kritik] really highly and said it felt like rather a discussion where they were being monitored, they could have authentic conversations with each other and get feedback on what people thought."
Kritik was established to challenge traditional learning pedagogies that placed the emphasis on instructors and professors to provide quality feedback. Not only is time spent grading student work reduced through the use of peer evaluation, students also have more opportunities to improve their critical thinking and soft skills while evaluating their peers.
“Kritik is a product where pedagogy is built in. You don’t have to create an assignment in a particular way to start seeing results.”
How did you feel about the quality of evaluation and feedback by students?
Dr. Hubbard shared that the calibration activities in Kritik allowed her to feel more confident with the peer assessment process. She explained that,
“the system learns from which students are better evaluators and it sets the expectations for how the students should be grading.”
Implementing peer evaluation in your course doesn’t mean compromising quality of feedback and the integrity of numeric scores. Over her course, Dr. Hubbard noticed the positive differences that peer assessment has made in her students’ work and how they communicate with each other. The steps in evaluating their peers became part of their learning process and increased knowledge retention and helped build students’ critical thinking skills.
As Dr. Hubbard shared,
“Students, through Kritik, have been able to develop and track their progress throughout the semester on their ability to evaluate their peers. It got better with time.”
Being able to track progress is important to us because it shows how students grow in their learning over time. As an instructor, it also allows you to see which students are understanding the material and how they apply that knowledge when they evaluate their peers.
How did students feel about evaluating their peers in Kritik?
“Students really liked being able to see examples of good work and they’re learning from each other. Their comments are coming from a place where they learn from their peers and it’s a great opportunity to learn something in a way that someone else explains and where it finally clicks for them.”
Kritik is a platform made by learners for learners. Not everyone learns and teaches the same way and the peer evaluation process allows flexibility for professors and students alike to cover course content. In addition to flexibility, peer evaluation empowers students to learn from each other and embrace diverse perspectives along the way.
Dr. Hubbard found that Kritik allowed for genuine discussions to take place because there was accountability in the evaluation process and “the three tier process allowed them to engage in more than one way.” Kritik enables genuine conversations to take place that encourage students to dig deeper in their learning and improve their communication skills.
And final thoughts from Dr. Hubbard,
“I love the product, I love the company and as soon as I saw that there was something new that this group was doing, I said ‘sign me up’! There’s always a reason for it, a logic to improve how students learn.”