LMS platforms have played a big role in digitizing higher education institutions so that students can find all their course information in one place and instructors have a foolproof way of making sure there is no loss of information. Students can track their grades, lecture recordings, notes, and discussions, and instructors can easily upload course content and assignments. While LMS platforms are able to provide the basic structure to house all learning materials, they do allow integrations with other tools that are able to enhance the system and provide a better teaching and learning experience to the students and instructors (Oguguo, 2022).
With the aim to address the problem of building critical thinking skills and increasing student engagement, Kritik was created as an online peer assessment tool that works with Canvas, Moodle, D2L, and Blackboard. In this article, we will be taking a dive deep into how Kritik can work with your LMS for you to adopt peer assessment in your courses. Here’s what we will be covering:
- Kritik and Canvas
- Kritik and Blackboard
- Kritik and D2L
- Kritik and Moodle
- 4 Differentiating Features of Kritik
- How does Kritik compare with other peer learning tools
Kritik and Canvas
Canvas provides a range of functionalities that enable students and instructors to manage their courses. Integrating Kritik with Canvas helps with boosting student engagement levels through peer assessment. Kritik's AI-driven platform provides a 360-degree peer feedback process and online discussion boards to enhance their learning experience. Students can evaluate each other's work anonymously and give feedback on the evaluations they’ve received. Instructors can embed Kritik into Canvas so that students can access all their courses from within Canvas.
Kritik and Blackboard
Blackboard’s powerful engine allows professors to manage their courses and create effective student learning experiences. Kritik’s integration with Blackboard enables instructors to enhance peer assessment capabilities, like giving qualitative and quantitative feedback and calibration and designing their assignments using a large repository of rubrics.
Kritik and D2L
D2L offers an adaptable and reliable LMS platform for K-12 to higher education. While D2L helps with course management, the scope for peer assessment is limited. By integrating with Kritik, students can give feedback on each others’ assignments which helps build soft skills essential for the workplace. Peer assessment on Kritik enables students to also gain a deeper grasp of course concepts by getting an opportunity to read their peers’ perspectives as well.
Kritik and Moodle
Moodle is a customizable LMS used by instructors and students to manage courses and grades. Since there is no peer assessment capability on Moodle, Kritik can be integrated with Moodle to support this functionality.
4 Differentiating Features of Kritik
While LMS platforms provide the basic structure for instructors and students to house their learning materials and manage other administrative tasks, Kritik is built to enhance student's learning experience through peer assessment. Here are three features of Kritik that set it apart from other peer learning tools:
1. Calibration
Since grading accuracy is a big concern for instructors looking to adopt peer assessment in their courses, the calibration feature on Kritik helps with this. Instructors can run a calibration activity at the beginning of their term by picking three past assignments of varying quality. Based on rubrics that the instructor provides, students give feedback on these assignments. The quality of the feedback given determines the student’s grading power.
How is a student’s grading power calculated?
Students using Kritik in their course can get a grading power based on a rating system with 1-6 stars. This improves or deteriorates based on the type of feedback they give to their peers. The more peer evaluations they do, the more practice they get that helps them get a better ranking.
A student’s grading power also affects their peers’ grades. For example, the evaluation given by a student with 3-star grading power will have 3 times as much value compared to a student with 6-stars who will have 6 times worth on the assignment they both evaluated.
2. Spotlight
The Spotlight feature allows an instructor to highlight great quality evaluations based on parameters such as ‘Above and Beyond’, ‘Innovative’, and ‘Motivational and Critical’. This gives students the opportunity to learn from their peers and the art of giving critical and helpful feedback.
3. Feedback on Feedback
Kritik provides a 360-degree feedback system that allows students to respond to their peers' evaluations they’ve received. This helps students to stay accountable for the quality of feedback they are giving.
4. Grade Disputes
Through the peer feedback process, if a student is unhappy with the evaluation or the grade they were given, they can submit a ‘Dispute Score’ request that immediately gets flagged to the instructor. The instructor can review the assignment and evaluation given and override the grade if they think the request is justified.
How does Kritik compare with other peer learning tools?
There are several peer learning tools in the market designed to reduce the instructors’ grading burden and help improve the student's learning experience.
1. Kritik vs Crowdgrader
Crowdgrader is a peer review tool for students to assess each other’s work. Kritik positions itself as a superior tool to CrowdGrader by providing 100% grading accuracy through the Calibration feature, the option of instructor-graded assignments, and having students close the loop by giving their evaluators feedback on the feedback they received.
2. Kritik vs Packback
Kritik and Packback are online peer-to-peer assessment tools for instructors to use in their courses. While Kritik offers individual and group evaluations, Packback only offers the former. If you are running a group activity in your course, Kritik offers the following options:
- Provide peer feedback as a group
- Provide peer feedback within group members
- Provide individual feedback
- Instructors-graded individual feedback
- Instructors-graded group feedback
3. Kritik vs Piazza
Kritik is a peer assessment tool with an online discussion board feature, whereas Piazza is a Q&A platform. Within Kritik, students can ask questions and receive answers from their peers that the instructor can moderate. Instructors using Kritik can create a discussion board to start conversations with their students and provide them with resources.
4. Kritik vs FeedbackFruits
FeedbackFruits is an LMS-integrated tool suite that helps with student engagement and collaboration. Kritik’s calibration and feedback on feedback feature make it a stronger peer assessment tool when compared with FeedbackFruits. When both these features work together, they will affect students’ grading power. While students get a voice in the peer assessment process, the final grades still rest with the instructor and can be reviewed if the students are unhappy with their feedback.
5. Kritik vs PeerScholar
PeerScholar is a peer assessment tool that focuses on student learning while exercising and measuring core skills. While PeerScholar only provides email support, Kritik has a 24/7 Live Chat feature with an average response time of just 20 seconds! Kritik also helps to identify disengaged students and flag them to the professors.
6. Kritik vs Perusall
Persuall is a social learning platform that hosts course material for students to prepare for their classes. The main difference between the two platforms is the calibration capability of Kritik and how students give feedback to each other. On Perusall, students can choose the number of creations they want to evaluate, which could lead to uneven evaluation distributions.
8. Kritik vs Eduflow
Eduflow is a peer learning platform that enables collaboration amongst students. Kritik is a superior tool to Eduflow because of its Calibration and Dispute Resolution features and integration capabilities.
9. Kritik vs CoStudy
Co-study can be used by group members to rate their peers and themselves. However, the questions are based on the contributions of the group members and not on the lessons. Kritik, on the other hand, encourages students to give qualitative and quantitative feedback based on the rubric that the instructor creates and also allows peers to respond to the evaluations that their group members have given them.
10. Kritik vs Mento.io
Mento.io is an AI-based discussion platform where the grading system is based on comments and engagement with the student's answers. Kritik offers a comprehensive 360-degree feedback loop that keeps students engaged from the time they start working on the assignment to when they receive peer feedback.
Disclaimer: The table has features that were researched from the companies' websites as of November 2022.
Supercharge your LMS with Kritik!
Leaders in higher education believe that peer assessment is the most scalable way to improve student engagement in classes (Adesina et. al., 2022). Kritik stands out as a superior peer assessment integration that seamlessly fits into your LMS and delivers what it promises: better student engagement, gathering diverse perspectives for the students to learn from, and reducing the grading burden for the instructor.
Schedule a demo with Kritik today to see how you can enhance your LMS to provide a better learning experience for your students.
References
Oguguo, B. C. E., Nannim, F. A., Agah, J. J., Ugwuanyi, C. S., Ene, C. U., & Nzeadibe, A. C. (2020, September 2). Effect of learning management system on student's performance in educational measurement and evaluation - education and Information Technologies. Education and Information Technologies, 26. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-020-10318-w
Adesina, O. O., Adesina, O. A., Adelopo, I., & Afrifa, G. A. (2022). Managing group work: the impact of peer assessment on student engagement. Accounting Education, 32(1), 90-113. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2022.2034023
