In a large online course such as this one, it's not feasible for a small group of teachers or facilitators to provide personalised feedback on each participant's work. Peer assessment is the only practical way to provide participants with feedback on their work.

A survey of participants who took part in a peer assessment activity in one of our previous courses indicated that...

• Most participants found the different aspects of the peer assessment activity to be a useful learning experience.
  
• Some participants were happy with the feedback they got from their peer assessors, but some were disappointed.
• Getting overly brief assessments without useful or practical suggestions was the most common cause for disappointment.
  

To edit your profile, click your name or photo in the top right hand corner of this site, click "Profile" and then "Edit profile". We recommend that you add a photo of yourself in your profile and write something about yourself in the "description" field. This way you'll contribute to making the course a friendly learning environment :) When editing your profile, you can also change your personal details (including your password), set your time zone, etc.

If you've submitted your work as part of a peer assessment activity, visit the activity page after the assessment phase to read the assessments you've received. When you visit the activity page, you can view your assessments by clicking the link to your submission. This link appears before the links to the assessments you have given to others. Once you click the link to your submission, you will see a page with a list of all the assessments you have received. Make sure you read all your assessments closely, and make notes on how you can improve your work.

If the submission is in DOC or DOCX format, please use Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer to open the document. LibreOffice is free and open source software, so it's a good choice if you don't have Word. If you are not able to open a submitted document with such software, or if you open the document and find it to be blank, please do the following: (1) complete a dummy assessment for this submission (eg, write 'could not open document' in each aspect of the assessment form), and (2) report the issue on the Technical Support / Technical Queries Forum.

The default time zone on this site is West Africa Time (WAT). In your online course, there may be events that are time-based (such as live sessions) and activities that have deadlines (such as writing activities). For such events and activities, your Dashboard on this site and the time alerts on activity pages show times in WAT by default.

To see mentions of times in your local time zone, edit your profile and change the time zone in the Timezone field. We also suggest you add reminders in your calendar about upcoming events and deadlines. If you would like to compare WAT with your local time, use this link.

The completion check mark for an activity that includes a peer assessment phase will appear once the activity is closed. It will NOT appear immediately after the submission and assessment phases.

1. Submission phase: This is the phase in which you have to prepare and submit your work. Read the instructions on the activity page to find out what you should submit.

2. Assessment phase: This is the phase in which you have to evaluate the submissions that have been allocated to you. When the activity moves to the assessment phase, the activity page will contain instructions on how you should carry out the assessments.

Once the above two phases are completed, the course facilitator will close the activity. You will see a completion check mark after the closure phase IF (1) you have submitted your work and (2) you have received at least one assessment. If you have submitted your work but you have not received any assessments, you will not see a completion check mark, but the course moderator will ensure that you get credit for this activity -- as long as you have assessed all the works allocated to you.

Remember: To receive completion credit for a peer assessment activity, you should take part in BOTH the submission and assessment phases.

1. Submission phase: This is the phase in which you have to prepare and submit your work.

2. Assessment phase: The system will randomly allocate some of your course colleagues' submissions to you, and you have to evaluate these using an assessment form.

3. Closure: Once the above two phases are completed, the course moderator will close the activity. You can then view the assessments you have received from your course colleagues.

Related: Completion credit for a peer assessment activity