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Transitioning to Harmonize Peer Review

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Overview

Peer review tools vary widely across higher education. Whether you're migrating from FeedbackFruits, Peerceptiv, Eli Review, Kritik, GoReact, or an LMS-native peer review feature, Harmonize provides a clear, flexible, multimodal, and LMS-integrated solution designed to support any discipline.

This guide explains how peer review in Harmonize works, how it compares to common peer review platforms, and why faculty find it easy to adopt.

 

Why Choose Harmonize Peer Review?

Harmonize Peer Review is built to make the peer review process clear, transparent, and accessible for students while giving instructors flexible tools for any course.

Key advantages include:

  • Support for any submission type (documents, slides, images, audio, video)
  • Rich multimodal feedback tools
  • Holistic rubric rating with commenting areas for each criterion
  • Optional AI assistance for rubric creation
  • Optional AI coaching for student self-reflection
  • Anonymous or visible reviewers
  • Just-in-time reviewer assignment
  • Clear, phase-specific instructions for students
  • Completion-based auto-grading or manual grading (see Grading a Peer Review Assignment)
  • Deep LMS integration, with extra options for Canvas users

💡 Insight: Harmonize gives instructors confidence that student feedback will be structured, specific, and aligned with course expectations—without requiring complex setup.

 

How Peer Review Works in Harmonize

Peer review in Harmonize centers on two main phases, but the transition between them is flexible.

Phase 1: Draft Submission

Students upload or record their draft. Harmonize supports:

Students cannot begin reviewing until they submit their own draft.

Phase Transition

Once a student submits their draft and there is work available to review:

  • They can immediately begin reviewing. They do not need to wait for the entire class to submit.
  • Late submissions do not disrupt the workflow. Students who are a little late will likely still receive reviews. Students who are very late may not receive reviews but are still able to give reviews.

💡 Insight: Harmonize’s responsive reviewer assignment keeps the activity moving even when students work at different paces.

Phase 2: Peer Review

Students complete the required number of reviews using:

Harmonize automatically shows students peer review instructions at the correct moment so they always know what to do next.

Optional Phase: Discussion

After reviews are released, students may optionally reply to reviewers if they want to continue to discuss their draft.

💡 Insight: Harmonize’s peer review system provides students with clear guidelines but also offers flexibility. For more insight into the student experience, see Peer Review: Student Guide.

 

Creating a Peer Review Assignment

Harmonize includes a guided wizard that walks instructors through set up. In the wizard, you can configure:

Additional configuration options are available in the editor:

  • Anonymous or visible reviewers (anonymous by default)
  • Minimum word counts for both drafts and reviews (optional, only work on text field not uploads, 200 word minimum enabled by default for reviews not using rubric rating)
  • Additional group options such as grouping manually or by number of groups
  • Pre-loaded, researched-backed Peer Review instructions that you can edit or overwrite
  • Adjustable points distribution between draft and reviews (if auto-grading)

For step-by-step instructions, see Create a Peer Review Assignment.

💡 Insight: The setup wizard enables instructors to create well-structured peer review assignments in minutes.

 

Reviewer Assignment: Flexible and Just-in-Time

Reviewer assignment is automated and designed to support real student behavior:

  • Students can initiate a peer review as soon as work is available to review
  • Workflow adapts to late submissions with no bottlenecks
  • Reviews can occur class-wide or within small groups

💡 Insight: Instructors no longer need to manually match reviewers or troubleshoot uneven pacing. Late students can still participate and earn full credit (if the instructor allows it), but they may not receive reviews.

 

Rubrics

Rubrics in Harmonize help students provide detailed, criterion-aligned feedback.

When rubric rating is enabled

  • Students must select a rating for each criterion
  • Students must leave a comment for each criterion
  • The rubric guides feedback but does not calculate a score
  • Rubric ratings do not sync to the LMS

Other rubric features

  • Harmonize includes an AI Assistant to generate rubrics from assignment instructions (see Harmonize Rubrics)
  • Canvas instructors can attach a separate Canvas rubric for grading, which is helpful for grading on feedback quality

💡 Insight: Holistic rubrics promote constructive feedback between students without giving students the power and responsibility of assigning actual grades.

 

Multimodal Feedback Tools

Harmonize supports a broad range of feedback modalities:

Instructors can use clear instructions to guide students to using specific modalities in their reviews.

💡 Insight: Multimodal tools allow Harmonize to support peer review for writing, design, engineering, lab skills, clinical competencies, art critique, and more.

 

Grading in Harmonize

Instructors have a variety of options for grading peer review in Harmonize.

Auto-Grading

Harmonize can automatically award points based on:

  • Draft submission
  • Completion of required reviews

The instructor can additionally choose:

  • Whether late work earns credit
  • Minimum word counts for drafts and reviews (these only apply to text in the text field, not uploads)

Harmonize sends one final combined grade back to the LMS.

Manual Grading

Instructors may manually enter a single score for the assignment and can leave comments for the student as desired. Instructors can even initiate their own reviews of student work.

Instructor Views (All LMSs)

Regardless of LMS, every instructor can:

  • View a student’s draft submission
  • View all reviews the student gave
  • Use the Activity View dashboard to monitor progress and completion at a glance

💡 Insight: The Activity View enables quick follow-up with students who are behind and simplifies oversight in large classes.

Canvas-Specific Advantage

Canvas users can take advantage of:

  • Deep SpeedGrader integration
  • Applying a Canvas rubric for grading

See Grading a Peer Review Assignment for full details.

💡 Insight: In Canvas, students use the Harmonize rubric for feedback, while instructors grade with a Canvas rubric. This make it possible to grade the peer review process on totally separate criteria, such as the strength, accuracy, or depth of review.

 

Conclusion

Harmonize Peer Review offers a modern, multimodal, LMS-native alternative to conventional peer review systems. With clear workflows, robust annotation tools, rubric rating options, and strong grading and visibility features, Harmonize supports peer critique in any discipline.

Whether you're coming from a tool that emphasizes text-based review, algorithmic scoring, or rigid step sequences, Harmonize provides an intuitive, educator-friendly alternative that empowers meaningful peer-to-peer learning.

 

FAQ

Are reviewers anonymous?

  • Reviewers are anonymous by default, but instructors can choose to make names visible if preferred.

Can students review multimedia submissions?

  • Yes. Harmonize supports documents, images, video, audio, and drawings.

Can instructors use a rubric for grading?

  • Yes. Canvas instructors can attach a Canvas rubric for grading. Students use the Harmonize rubric for feedback.

Does Harmonize use algorithmic scoring?

  • No. Grading is transparent. Auto-grading is based on completion and timeliness. Manual grading can also be used. Rubric grading is also possible: Canvas users can grade with any rubric, and non-Canvas users can grade with the same rubric used by reviewers inside the peer review activity.

Can students begin reviewing early?

  • Yes. Once they submit their draft and work is available to review, they can start immediately.

How does Harmonize handle late assignment submissions?

  • Students are able to submit drafts late unless you close the assignment. Because reviews are assigned "just in time," students can generally be a little late and still receive reviews. If students are very late, they may not receive reviews, but they will still be able to complete reviews for others. Some students will just receive extra reviews.

  • For auto-grading purposes, you can control whether or not students who are late receive credit.

Can students review their reviewers (give feedback on feedback)?

  • No. However, they can reply to any reviews they receive from peers to ask clarifying question or to seek additional feedback.

Does Harmonize include a reflection phase?

  • No, but instructors can ask students to respond to reviewers or complete a follow-up activity, such as a reflection in an Individual Assignment. Alternatively, you can ask students to run the AI Coach and make revisions prior to their initial submission. From the grading area, you can check that they've run the Coach (or you can make running the coach and showing revisions be part of what peers review for each other).

Does Harmonize support group submissions for Peer Review?

  • No, Harmonize does not support group submissions in any of its tools.

  • One possible workaround: Ask each member of the group to submit the whole group project. Create a group set where students are not in the same group with other students they worked with. Students will then be assigned to review the work of a different group. See Managing Groups in Harmonize.

Can Harmonize Peer Review be used for group members to review each other?

  • Not exactly. There is no way for a review to begin until someone submits something. To do a group member review, ask each group member to submit a self reflection, and then have group members respond to those self reflections with their own reviews.

  • A note on different group sizes: In Harmonize, you have to specify the number of reviews a student must do, and it has to be the same for all students. So if you have one group of 3 and one group of 4, you'll need to ask students to complete 2 reviews, and the students in the group of 4 will only receive reviews from 2 of their group members.

Can students score each other, and can Harmonize average scores or send them to the LMS?

  • No. Harmonize peer review is not designed for students to assign each other grades.

  • Grading options are auto-grading based on completion, manual grading, or rubric grading. Note that rubric grading is only applicable for Canvas users or for non-Canvas users who want to grade with the same rubric students use in the review.

Can we do a "big reveal" at the end where all student work and all reviews become visible to everyone?

  • No. However, visibility switching is available in Discussions, so you might see if your peer review could be set up there instead.

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