In the peer review task, students evaluate each other’s work and give each other feedback based on clear criteria given by the teacher. The goal is to learn how to give and receive constructive feedback, improve and enrich the quality of work with new perspectives, and learn new things. Peer review can be built with the help of various tools. The selection of a suitable tool is affected by, for example, whether the assignments to be assessed are to be divided for evaluation automatically, whether the assessment should be given anonymously, and what is the teacher’s role in approving the feedback or providing the final assessment.
This tip shows you how to leverage a M365 Forms form for peer review when combined with a Power Automate flow. This makes it possible to give feedback on the form so that the feedback is sent directly to the recipient’s email, but part of the feedback (grade) can only be viewed by the teacher.
What do I need?
You’ll need an M365 Forms form and an M365 Power Automate flow. You can find both tools in the M365 service.
Process:
- Forms form: The student fills in the peer feedback form and submits it.
- Power Automate: The workflow extracts only certain fields from the submitted form and compiles them into an email for the recipient of peer feedback, i.e. another student.
- Email: The recipient of peer feedback will automatically receive feedback by email.
- Forms form responses: The teacher can view all peer feedback and also grades that are not sent as peer feedback to students.
What should I do?
Create Forms form
Open M365 Forms.
Create a new form and add the fields to the form:
- Instructions for the form
- The feedback you give will automatically send an email to the recipient of the feedback, which contains verbal feedback and the name of the person giving the feedback. Only the teacher can see the grade you have given.
- Course / Assignment
- Field type: choice
- Add the courses and assignments as the options to be selected, e.g. Course 1 / Assignment 2
- Kenelle annat palautteen
- Field type: short text
- Subtitle: Enter the feedback recipient’s tuni.fi email address.
- Restrictions: Email (mandatory format of the information to be entered in the field)
- Palaute
- Field type: long text
- Subtitle: Sent to the recipient of the feedback. The feedback is also visible to the teacher.
- Arvosana
- Field type: choice
- Subtitle: Not sent to the recipient of the feedback. Only the teacher can see the grade.
- Add the grades as the options to be selected, e.g. 1-5
Create a new form from scratch yourself or copy the form template here and edit the template. Remember to write instructions for the assessment and define the assessment criteria and assessment targets in the description field of the form or e.g. in Moodle in connection with the assignment.
Finally, select from the form settings:
- Only people in TUNI.fi can reply and record name
- Accept responses
Power Automate
With Power Automate, you can implement automated workflows without any programming knowledge. In this case, a simple workflow is implemented that is triggered each time a specific Forms form is submitted.
Open M365 Power Automate.
Almost all of Power Automate’s insturctions are only available in English, and many terms are difficult in other languages, so it’s a good idea to change the tool’s interface to English.
Change the language to English: The gear icon in the top bar > View all Power Automate settings > Choose display language
Start creating a new workflow. Select from the left menu “Create”.
Type to “Seach all templates” field “Send an email to responder when response submitted in Microsoft Forms” and press Enter. Choose a workflow template “Send an email to responder when response submitted in Microsoft Forms” and proceed forward from the “Continue” button.
Click a workflow step “When a new response is submitted” and select from the options:
- Form Id: Select a Forms form that you created earlier
Click a workflow step “Get response details” and select from the options:
- Form Id: Select a Forms form that you created earlier
- Response Id: By default, it should be filled already as Response Id
Open the “Condition” step from a small arrow.
Click on the workflow step “Send an email (V2)” and select from the options:
- To: First, clear the entire field and select “Who you give feedback to” from the field’s lightning bolt icon
- Subject: First, clear the entire field and then write “Peer feedback: ” in the field and select “Course / Assignment” from the field’s lightning bolt icon
- Body: First, clear the entire field and add the following email content, for example:
You have received peer feedback. This is a message sent automatically by the peer feedback form, which is therefore shown as being sent by the course teacher.
Feedback provider: [select a field from the lightning bolt icon “Responders’ Email”]
Recipient of the feedback: [select a field from the lightning bolt icon “Who you give feedback to”]
Course / Assignment: [select a field from the lightning bolt icon “Course / Assignment”]
Feedback: [select a field from the lightning bolt icon “Feedback”]
Save the finished workflow with the “Save” button. Finally, you can change the name of the workflow by clicking on the default name “Send an email to responder when response submitted in Microsoft Forms” at the top.
Additional step for advanced users: Preserve feedback line breaks
By default, the Power Automate flow doesn’t know how to preserve feedback line breaks because the line breaks should be changed to HTML markup for the email message.
After the workflow step “Get response details”, add a new step by clicking the + button.
Select “Compose” as the step action.
Click on the workflow step “Compose” and select from the options:
- Inputs: Click on the fx icon in the field
- Paste the code: replace(, decodeUriComponent(‘%0A’), ‘<br>’)
- Click the code and place the cursor after the first parenthesis before the comma
- Choose from “Dynamic Content” -tab “Feedback” and it will be placed to the code
- Hyväksy “Add” -painikkeella
Click on the workflow step “Send an email (V2)” and select from the options:
- Body: Remove the previous Feedback placeholder and select “Outputs” from the field’s lightning bolt icon.
Test the operation
Copy the response link to the form from Forms and try sending peer feedback to yourself.
What do I need to take into account?
- Peer feedback is sent to students by email, so the solution is not suitable for peer feedback that could contain sensitive information, such as health information or the like.
- Do not allow from Forms settings to anyone to submit the form anonymously. In this case, anyone could use the form to anonymously send spam messages in your name to anyone.
- The Power Automate flow automatically sends emails to the peer feedback recipient in your (teacher’s) name from your own Outlook email, so the sent emails will also appear in your Outlook Sent folder.
- If a Power Automate flow isn’t used for 90 days, the flow is automatically turned off. In this case, the flow must be restarted in the Power Automate “My flows” view by selecting the three dots next to the grayed out flow and “Turn on”.