Writing Criteria

Well written criteria are the key to a successful peer review assignment.

Criteria should be...

Hidden Answers

The criteria are shown to students with the assignment description, even before they submit.

An optional additional alternate text can be provided for each criterion. This second text appears during and after reviewing. This allows you to create criteria with specific answers or tests that are not shown to the students before they submit.

More Complex Criteria Text

Criteria can be simple short pieces of text, or more complex. If you know how to write in HTML, this can help you to create criteria with structure and formatting. For example, tags such as <strong>...</strong> can be placed around text to make it strong, <em>...</em> tags for emphasis, a singleton <br /> tag can be used to include a line break, and so on.

Criterion Values

The values for all criteria, plus the reward students receive for completing reviews, should sum to the Grade value for the assignment. The system attempts to enforce correct addition. Guidance is provided at the bottom of the Criteria page.

Examples of Criteria

The following are good examples are objective, concise, binary criteria. (HTML tags have been used to bolden text and insert line-breaks.)

Example from a programming assignment...
Comments are used to describe the purpose of blocks of code
There should be at least three comments. Comments should describe blocks of code with a common purpose, eg.,
// Outputting a list with user stats
Example from a word processing assignment...
An automatic table of contents is used
The table of contents should have been created automatically, based on heading style headings, rather than entered manually. If you click in the table of contents, the entire table should be selected. You should not be able to edit the table of contents manually.
Example from an essay assignment...
Citations follow the IEEE referencing style
Citations should be formatted in the IEEE style with a number in square brackets, for example "...conclusively demonstrated [4].". Where a quote is presented, the page number should also be shown.