“Peer Assessment” – buzz phrase in education – is an activity to which Moodle lends itself beautifully. I have used the Moodle workshop module in the past for peer assessment  (see here) It can be set up  in many different ways and at levels from basic to advanced. However,  its complexity dissuades some from trying  it. The “new, improved” Workshop for Moodle 2 which can  be tested here is much more user-friendly and I await its arrival eagerly.

In the meantime, and if you only want a quick, very simple peer assessment task, it is possible to tweak a Moodle forum to do the job. The following screencast shows one way to do this. If you scroll down below the screencast, there are instructions how to set up your forum to achieve this.

The key to making a forum a place for students to peer assess is to enable ratings and then give them the permission to rate each others’ submissions. (What they submit might be text or an attachment such as an image, slideshow, movie/sound file)

1. In the settings for your forum, in “grade”, choose how you want the ratings to work. I chose “average”. All students must grade(rate) each others’ submissions and then each classmate will have an average mark.
2. I kept to the numbers scale for simplicity but you can use customised scales if you wish
3. In course admin>assign roles, click on the “override permissions” tab. (If you are a teacher and you don’t see this tab then ask your Moodle admin to give you the rights to “override permissions”)
4. Click on “student” and scroll down to the forum section
5. To allow them to rate/grade each others’ submissions click the “allow ” button for “rate posts”
6. If you don’t want them to be able to see  who has given which grade to whom , then click the “prevent” buttons for “view any rating” and “view rating”.