A Canvas Peer Review assignment enables students to review and provide constructive feedback on another student's assignment submission. Peer reviews foster student communication, support active learning, and help students master course concepts through collaborative feedback.
Overview
In a peer review workflow, Canvas assigns a student another student’s submission to review. The reviewer can then leave comments on the submission details page and, when applicable, complete an attached rubric. This process helps students engage with assignment expectations from both the creator and evaluator perspective.
Peer reviews are especially useful for drafting, revision-based assignments, presentations, writing-intensive activities, and any course work where feedback from classmates can support learning before or alongside instructor grading.
Key Features & Essentials
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Submission requirement: Students can only access and complete assigned peer reviews after submitting their own work for the assignment.
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Notifications: When Canvas assigns a peer review, students receive an email notification and also see the review listed in both their Dashboard To Do list and Activity Stream.
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Privacy of comments: Students can only view feedback left directly on their own submission. They cannot see peer review comments written for other students or comments submitted by other reviewers, teaching assistants, or instructors.
Anonymity Settings
Canvas peer reviews can be configured to show student identities or to run anonymously, depending on the instructional goal of the assignment.
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Named peer reviews: Student names are visible to the reviewer and the student receiving feedback.
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Anonymous peer reviews: Reviewer and recipient names are hidden from students.
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Important limitation: Once peer reviews have been assigned, anonymity settings cannot be changed unless the peer reviews are deleted and assigned again.
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DocViewer limitation: Canvas DocViewer does not support inline annotated feedback for anonymous peer reviews.
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Instructor visibility: Instructors and TAs can still view reviewer names in SpeedGrader and on the student submission page unless anonymous grading is also enabled in SpeedGrader.
Important: Decide whether peer reviews should be anonymous before assigning them. Changing anonymity later requires deleting and re-assigning the peer reviews.
Peer Feedback & Rubrics
Students complete peer reviews in one or both of the following ways, depending on how the assignment is configured:
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Leaving comments on the submission details page
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Completing an attached rubric
If a rubric is attached to the assignment, students must complete the rubric assessment for Canvas to mark the peer review as complete.
Rubric scores entered during a peer review are used as peer feedback only. They do not automatically create or transfer a grade in the Gradebook.
Grading Considerations
Standard Canvas peer reviews do not automatically generate assignment grades. Even when students complete a rubric during the review process, instructors must still evaluate the submission and enter the final grade manually in the Gradebook.
This distinction is important when setting expectations with students. Peer review activity can support learning and revision, but it does not replace instructor grading.
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