Workshop

Just been badly burned by this one as set the final stage to change I thought automatically - now looking for an alternative tool after a series of serious issues with workshop requiring changes to grading and the activity.

The idea was simple: submit a draft assignment before the deadline, random allocation to a peer, write comments as a review, receive comments after deadline.

No automation meant it didn't switch over as advertised - setting dates for phase changes didn't work. However more problematic was that no comments were shared even after manual phase change intervention.

Specifically set it to grading strategy: comments. However comments were judged by the system as incomplete/insufficient and not shared even after manual intervention to change phase as they weren't complete as there was no criteria. That was the point - no grade, just comments!

Retrofitting a pass/fail and asking people to pass led to some comments being lost, others making it etc. and a lot have gone missing and we've had to fall back on email.

So can you not have text only reviewing/comments but MUST rank or grade your peers? Or was there some other setting that caused the issue here? What was it? Grading would have completely defeated the purpose of the exercise. Retrofitting it was problematic and I don't think anyone's going to support using this tool again - pity, good idea just pretty incomprehensible and unexpected and unclear in its implementation and documentation. 

Problematic - anyone know of another tool to use that does do automatic allocation and switch of stages + written reviews only without having to give a grade? PeerMark?