Case Study: University of Waterloo boosts student engagement and peer feedback with Kritik

Rania Al-Hammoud Peer Assessment in Large Engineering Courses

The University of Waterloo's Prof. Rania Al-Hammoud sought to create a more interactive learning environment and manage the heavy grading burden in her large civil engineering course of approximately 350 students. Her challenge was a lack of time and resources to provide effective feedback to every student. She turned to the vendor Kritik to implement its peer assessment platform.

Using Kritik, Prof. Al-Hammoud set up rubrics and managed four distinct peer assessment activities, which improved the quality and fairness of grading by incorporating multiple perspectives. The solution led to three key outcomes: better quality peer evaluations, significantly higher student engagement, and a major saving of grading time for the instructor. Kritik enabled a dynamic and collaborative learning experience for the large class.

University of Waterloo

Rania Al-Hammoud

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering