iPeer User Documentation

(Created August 2010)

iPeer is an application to develop and deliver rubric-based peer evaluations, to review and release student comments, to build progress report forms online, and to analyze evaluation results. It has extensive features including user management system, student feedback control, data import/export, automatic installer, self-evaluation and etc… (from: ​http://ipeer.apsc.ubc.ca/home/?page=about)

Technical Information

iPeer is a Web Application. This means that it runs on a server, and can be accessed with any web browser.
iPeer is written in a web programming language PHP (​http://www.php.net) and uses a framework called CakePHP. (​http://www.cakephp.org) to structure its code. For more technical details, please see Trac website at ​http://burrito.olt.ubc.ca/trac/

Students

The students interface is focused on completing evaluations. After students have been created, and assigned to courses, they can log into the system, and complete evaluation events.

Login for Students

Students can log in via 2 mechanisms:

• via username and password, like every other user on the system.
• via the CWL plug-in (for University of British Columbia (UBC)).
  • Note that if this plug-in is enabled, the students cannot login via iPeer's username and password, and must use their CWL login.

iPeer Login for Students

The students login with their username and password.

• Username: enter your student number
• Password: enter the password given to you by your instructor or TA. You can update it later.

Click the login button to complete the login process.

CWL Login for UBC Students

Click on the CWL logo at the login screen, and you will be taken to the UBC CWL login page. Login just like for other UBC pages, and after the logon is complete, you'll be taken iPeer Home.

• Please note that if you use your CWL login, changing your password in iPeer will have no effect on your CWL password.

Updating Email on First Logon

If this your first time logging into iPeer, you may be asked to update your email. Please enter you email to the right Email: label, and click the Save button on the bottom of the screen. The top of your page should now read:
Your Profile Has Been Updated Successfully.
Go to your iPeer Home page.
Click on the orange "Go to your iPeer Hope page" link to finish.

Home Page

When a students logs in, they are presented with the home page. Student's view of iPeer is focused on submitting evaluations assigned by their instructors.
This page contains 2 sections, both listing evaluation events:

Peer Evaluations Due

These are the evaluation that should be completed. For example:

Event	Course	Due Date	Due In / Late By (red)
Evaluation 1	COMP 101 101	Sun, Sep 5, 2010 11:55 am	30 day(s)

To complete an evaluation, just clink on its title. So, to complete the above event, you would click on "Evaluation 2".

Peer Evaluations Submitted

These evaluations were already completed by you. Example:

Event	Course	Due Date	Date Submitted
Evaluation 1	home COMP 101 101	Sun, Sep 5, 2010 11:55 am	Fri, Sep 3, 2010 9:25 am

If you want to see your answers for this evaluation, click on it's title. A new window or tab will pop up, with the evaluation answers, and results, if these were released.

Filling out Evaluations

There are 4 types of evaluations in iPeer: Simple Evaluations, Rubrics, and Mixed evaluations. After clicking on an evaluation name, the selected evaluation will open:

Simple Evaluations

Simple evaluations are the most basic evaluation types in iPeer. There are a set number of points to distribute among your team members. The following instructions appear on the evaluation page itself, and this manual will expand on each of the point state:

1. Rate your peer's relative performance by using the slider. [Weight 1-10]
   • iPeer has an semi-automatic system for distributing points with amongst your team members. Slide each of the orange sliders in to evaluate your team members relative to one another. You are now assigning slider points
2. Click "Distribute" button to distribute points.
   • iPeer will calculate the percentage of "relative points" you assigned to each of your teammates, and will then calculate how many real points each is given.
   • For example, the evaluation has 200 Real Points to distribute amongst your 4 teammates. You assign them "relative score" of 8 for each. You then click distribute. The total number of "relative scores" will be 32. Since you gave each member 8 relative point, their will all get 4/32*100% = 25% of the total read score. When calculating "real score", each member will get 200 Points * 25% = 50 points / member.
   • The above situation would repeat itself if you assigned each member a slider score, of 2, or 4, or 6, or anything else. Since the number of "relative points" you gave to each member mains equal, they will all be equal relative to one another. It is only the relative score for each member that counts, and will determine the real points at the end.
   • If the above info is confusing, then simply forget about the sliders and Distribute button! Instead, enter the number of points you would like to give to each teammate manually, fill out the comments, and submit your evaluation. Remember, make sure that the points add up to the total number of points to distribute. This is explained in point 3. bellow.
3. Allocate any remaining points.
   • This step usually occurs in cases where the "Distribute" button could not allocate all the points exactly according to your relative scores.
   • For example, if you relative-scored all your three teammates equally, and the number of total points is 100, the real points cannot be equally divided! Each member would get 33 points, and 33+33+33 = 99, with one real point left to distribute. To distribute this point, you would give one of your team members a score of 34 manually. That way, the total real score would be 34 + 33 + 33 = 100, and all points would be distributed.
   • If "Distribute" button succeeded in giving everyone an fair score, or if you distributed all the points yourself, this step is obviously unnecessary!
4. Enter Comments
   • You may always enter a comment. Some instructors will require you to enter comments, and others will not. Whatever the case might be, please remember that explaining the reasons for your evaluation of your team-mates is always a good idea!
5. NOTE: "Submit Evaluation" button will only be enabled when all points, and comments (if required), are filled!
   • Before you submit:
     • Look over your scores on more time.
     • Check that you entered all the comments that you like, or are required to.
   • If the Submit button is grayed out, you are missing something. Check the comments and total number of real points once again.

Rubric Evaluations

In Rubric Evaluations, you will rate your team members on different aspects of their performance.

• For example, if one of your teammates participates very well in meetings, but is late turning in assignments, you could rate them separately on these categories.

Each category has a score, and comment.

• Filling out the score is required. There are usually 5 available scores. Make sure to set a score for each category. The lowest score is selected by default.
• Comments may or may not be required, depending on your instructor's wishes. When writing comments, please be thorough, respectful and descriptive.

All you teammate's forms will be arranged in a "accordion"-type interface. This means that each member's evaluation is folded-up. Here's an example with 4 teammates:

Group Member Wilma	-	(click to expand)
Group Member Fred	-	(click to expand)
Group Member Betty	-	(click to expand)
Group Member Barny	-	(click to expand)

1. Your first teammate's evaluation will be shown already.
2. Please fill out that first team mate's evaluation, and save it!
   • If you don't save each part as you fill it out, the information could be lost when you move on to the next teammate.
3. When you click another teammate's name, their evaluation forms will unfold. You can now complete the evaluation and Save it. Please complete each teammate's evaluation in this way.
   • You may freely go back and forth between your teammates, but if you modify anything for a teammate, please save their section before moving on.
   • When you save a section, the accordion interface will show your first teammate's evaluation form again. This is a known iPeer issue - please select your next teammate manually for now.
4. When you are dome, submit the evaluation.
   • If the Submit button is disabled, some of the evaluations have not been complete. You should:
     • Check that you have completed the evaluations for all students.
     • If your instructor requires comments, check all the input fields (blank-white areas) for your teammates are filled. There's a comment for each teammate's category, and a general comment about each teammate.

Mixed Evaluations

Mixed evaluations are similar to rubrics, with an addition of short answer questions. Just like in rubrics, the evaluations are arranged in an accordion-like arrangement,

Group Member Wilma	-	Incomplete (click to expand)
Group Member Fred	-	Incomplete (click to expand)
Group Member Betty	-	Incomplete (click to expand)
Group Member Barny	-	Incomplete (click to expand)

1. Your first teammate's evaluation will be shown.
2. Please fill out that first team mate's evaluation, and save it!
3. After saving, click the name of your next teammate, and complete the evaluation in the save way, and then save it too.
   • You may freely go back and forth between your teammates, but if you modify anything for a teammate, please save their section before moving on.
   • When you save a section, the accordion interface will show your first teammate's evaluation form again. This is a known iPeer issue - please select your next teammate manually for now.
4. After completing all the evaluations for all the group members, submit the evaluation.
   • If the Submit button is disabled, some of the evaluations have not been complete. You should:
     • Check that you have completed the evaluations for all students. All the questions must be answered, and the answeres saved.

Instructors

Instructors have many options in iPeer, that will be covered in the next section.

New to iPeer?

After your account has been create by an administrator, you are ready to login and use iPeer.

• Please note that you must login with the username and password provided to you by your admin.
• If you are at UBC, please note that CWL login does not work for instructor accounts. In iPeer, these are meant for students only.

Next is a list of steps for new Instructors. To get your courses up and running, you should:

1. First create a course!
2. Then, add students to your course, either one-by-one, or all at once using a CSV file.
3. Group those students into groups.

You would then be ready to create evaluations for your students to complete:

1. Create an Evaluation. There are 3 types available, and each one can be re-used.
2. Create an Evaluation Event. This will give the evaluation to the students to complete
3. After the due date, look at the results, or export them into a CSV file.

All of these steps are described in detail in the sections bellow

Courses

Everything in iPeer revolves around courses. Courses has contain student lists, group lists, and evaluation events.

Creating a Course

To create a course:

1. Click on the courses tab.
2. Click "Add a course", just like in the image on the right --->
3. Enter a course name. This is best done as [Department] [Course#] [Section#], so for example
   • ENGL 112 102, meaning this is English course number 112, section 102.
4. Enter a course Title, like:
   • Academic Writing
5. Enter a homepage for the course, with a URL starting with http:// or https://
6. Click Add course. The a course list will show up, and you can select your new course to start adding students. To do this, click on the course's name or title.

Course Maintenance

If you ever wish to edit the information you entered when creating your course, you can do this from the courses tab:

1. Click on the courses tab.
2. Click on the edit icon beside a course. The edit icon is shown by the blue arrow on the image on the right ---->
3. A window will pop up where you can edit basic information about this course.
4. Edit any information you choose, and save it by clicking the "Update Course" Button.

You may also delete your own courses. Please be warned: deleting a course also remove all students from that course, their responses to evaluations for that course, and any evaluation events. If you are absolutely, positively sure that you want to delete a course, this is done by:

1. Clicking on the courses tab.
2. Clicking on the delete icon. The delete icon shown by the red arrow on the image on the upper right (just like the edit icon, in blue).
3. Confirm that you intend to delete the course by clicking on the OK button.
4. The course is now deleted.

Course Home Screen

Most functionality is accessed from a courses home screen. You can manage students, groups, and evaluation events from that screen. To activate a courses home screen:

1. Click on the courses tab.
2. Click on your course's name or title links. These are orange in color.

Details of what is done at the home screen are found in the next few sections.

Students

Adding students to your courses can be done in 2 ways, and these are explained bellow

Adding Students one by one

This method is best for class with few students. Each student is entered manually via iPeer form. For larger classes, it may be better to assemble a CSV form, as described in the next section

1. Go to a course's home page.
   • If the student's menu is hidden, unhide it by clicking "show/hide" link to its right.
2. Click on "Add Student"
3. Enter a students data.
   • note: Student #, First Name, Last Name are all required. Email is not, and if it is left out, the student will be asked to fill that in.
4. Click Save to Add the student, the student password will not be randomly generated, the following summary table will appear:

Username	First Name	Last Name	Password
12345781	John	Dow	W23YD2

Please record this password, and give it to this student so that they can login.

• Note, that recording a password is not necessary if you are at UBC, since the students can use CWL to login to iPeer.

5. Click on the second orange link, "Back to Add User" to add more students. Then, repeat from step 3. for all the students in the class.

Adding Students via CSV file

To add many students as once, you can create a CSV file in the following format:

Each line represents a new student, and the column order is the following:

Username, Password,    Student#,  Email,First Name,Last Name

The username should be the same as the student number.

22928030, password123, 22928030, sam@server.com, Sam,     Badhan
78233046, pass5323123, 78233046, jb@server.com,  Jamille, Borromeo
39577051, psaswdrcD23, 39577051, jc@server.com,  Jordon,  Cheung
68000058, password123, 68000058, dc@server.com,  David,   Cliff

In you wish to leave the Email Column out, just empty that column out, leaving the comma, for example:

22928030, password123, 22928030,, Sam,     Badhan
78233046, pass5323123, 78233046,, Jamille, Borromeo
39577051, psaswdrcD23, 39577051,, Jordon,  Cheung
68000058, password123, 68000058,, David,   Cliff

Note the double-comma between the student number, and the first name. This type of file should be created in a text editor, like Notepad. You could also create this file with a spreadsheet editor like OpenOffice Calc, or Microsoft Excel, but make sure you set the CSV export settings correctly when saving the file:

• Comma character as the separator.
• No quotes in rows or columns.

When the CSV file is ready, do the following to access the student import form.

1. Go to a course's home page.
   • If the student's menu is hidden, unhide it by clicking "show/hide" link to its right.
2. Click on "Add Student"
3. On the bottom of the page, there will be a line reading Import Students From Text (.txt) or CSV File (.csv) click here to start]. Click on the orange "click here to start" link on the right. This will open the Import student form you see to the right.

Follow the step on this form to upload your CSV to iPeer. They are explained bellow.

1) Please select a CSV file to import.

• to Select the file to import, click on the Browse... button and select the file from your computer.

2) Select the course to import into:

• Make sure to choose the right course to import the students into. This will not always be set to your current course, so please check this field before importing.

3) Click the button bellow to Import the students:

• Once ready, press this button to import the students. The next screen will display a summary of the students that were imported. Look over the data to check that the import process completed successfully.

Groups

After students are imported, groups should be created. The manual was to create groups is recommended

Manual Group Creation

This can be done manually (quick and simple for small to medium sized classes, maybe up to 50 students).

1. Go to a course's home page.
   • If the "Groups" menu is hidden, unhide it by clicking "show/hide" link to its right.
2. Click on "Create Group (Manual)". This will open the group creation window.
3. There are 2 list of students, one full of your class students on the left, and one empty on the right.
   • See figure to the right for a screen-shots and pointers ---->
   • The students on the left are your unassigned class students, that are waiting to be assigned into groups.
   • The students on the right are already in the group you are creating (and since this is a new group, this list is empty!)
4. Add students to this group. You could do any on the following bellow.
   • Select one student at a time from the left list, and click the "Assign >>" button. This will add the student to the group. Or you could...
   • Select more than on student by holding the Control key while clicking on students, then clicking the "Assign >>" button. This would transfer all the selected students to the group
   • A combination of the above methods. Ex: Select and Add 2 students at a time, then repeat 3 times to make a group of 6.
5. If you added a student by mistake, you could remove them from the group by selecting the student from the right list, and clicking on "Remove".
6. When you are done adding students to the group, please:
   • Enter a group number for these students
   • Enter a group name for these students
   • Click "Add Group" on the bottom of the page
7. Repeat this process for all the groups in you class.

Importing group list from CSV file

This method is suited to grouping students in very large classes. It involves a similar process to importing students from a CSV file above.

You should first prepare a CSV file in the following format: The column order is

Student#, Group#, Team Name

And the file contents is like:

29978037, 1, Team A
29978063, 1, Team A
29978043, 2, Team B
29978051, 2, Team B

Please ensure that all the students listed have already been created in iPeer, and added to the class.

Just like for the student import procedure, this type of file should be created in a text editor, like Notepad. You could also create this file with a spreadsheet editor like OpenOffice Calc, or Microsoft Excel, but make sure you set the CSV export settings correctly when saving the file:

• Comma character as the separator.
• No quotes in rows or columns.

Once this file is prepared, you are ready to import it into iPeer.

1. Go to a course's home page.
   • If the "Groups" menu is hidden, unhide it by clicking "show/hide" link to its right.
2. Click on "Create Group (Manual)". This will open the group creation window.
3. On the bottom of the page, there is a line stating Import Groups From Text (.txt) or CSV File (.csv) [+] Click on the orange [+] on the right of the page to continue.

All you need to do now is just follow the instruction for importing the file:

1) Please select a CSV file to import:

• Click "Browse..." and find the CSV file you created.

2) Select the course to import into:

• Be sure to select the right course to import, since the list will likely not have your courses selected by default.

3) Click the button bellow to create the Groups:

• After you are sure everything is set up correctly, click on import. This will process the file, and take you to the group listing for your course. The group creation process is now complete.

Evaluations

Evaluations can be created at any time in iPeer. There are 3 general types of Evaluations, all have their benefits and drawbacks.

Simple Evaluations

Simple evaluations let a student distribute a set number of points among her or his teammates, and comment on their score for each teammate. See the screen shot to the left.
This type of evaluation is the easiest to set up by instructors and do by students, taking the least time. However, it rates students as a whole, and does not ask specific questions about their team contributions.

To see a flash movie of how to create a simple evaluation and assign it to student groups, see:

Movie about creating Simple Evaluations and their evaluation events.

To create a simple evaluation

Rubric Evaluations

To see a flash movie of how to create a Rubric and assign it to student groups, see raw-attachment:Rubric.swf

Movie about creating Rubrics and their evaluation events.

Mixed Evaluations

To see a flash movie of how to create a Mixed Evaluation and assign it to student groups, see raw-attachment:Mixed.swf

Movie about creating Mixed Evaluations and their evaluation events.

Events

Instructors form the second largest user group. Instructors have the added ability to:

• edit courses

• add/edit/copy students

• add/edit/copy groups

• create/edit/copy evaluation formats

• add/edit/copy evaluation events

• email groups

Note: Instructors are only allowed to modify information related to their courses.

Administrators

Administrators form the smallest user group. An administrator has instructor capabilities (see above) for all courses and users. The administrator also has the privilege to delete information, which can cause data inconsistency. There is also a super admin account that is used for administration of all users including administrators. Administrators should be extremely cautious when removing data as it is very easy to cause database inconsistencies.

• For example, a to remove a student that has been enrolled in a course, and has taken evaluations will likely cause errors when those evaluations are viewed. It is best to leave old users in the database.

Icons

Below is a description of the icons that are used in the iPeer web application.

Glossary

Evaluation Event: An evaluation task which is assigned to specific groups of students. An evaluation event must also has an evaluation format, release time (starting and end), and due date.

Evaluation format: Methods for members of a group to evaluate other members (and possibly themselves).

Rubric evaluation: An evaluation format where a matrix is used to rate students according to different levels of mastery (e.g. poor, satisfactory, excellent). Students assess their team members' contributions through answering multiple choice type questions and providing written comments if desired.

Simple Evaluation: An evaluation format where members rate other members (possibly themselves) by allocating to each member a portion of a possible mark total (conceptually dividing up money among group members).