Frequently Asked Questions

Who can use the Portal?

Institutions which require external referencing for quality assurance and quality enhancement purposes. For example, education institutions, government departments, professions/industry.

What areas can be reviewed?

• Assessment inputs/outputs
• Teaching/promotion
• Thesis examination
• Curriculum review
• Support for professional accreditation and course accreditation
• Internal/external peer review for professional development
• Institutional benchmarking
• Professional body review

What are some of the features of the Portal?

• Secure storage of data in the Cloud
• Dashboard for monitoring projects
• Scheduling of reviews
• Can be used internally/externally to support review
• Online network of peer reviewers-search engine is being developed
• Linking projects
• Portable
• Automatic saving of data
• Delivers institutional reports
• Results can be calibrated automatically or manually
• Different project types: peer review of assessment [inputs/outputs], Program review, benchmarking [coming soon] and professional body review.

How do I register?

Go to https://www.peerreviewportal.com and register.
Registration is free.
You have two options to register:

1. Click on Australian Access Federation (AAF). Australian Universities are supported by the AAF, enter your uni username and password, then go to Account to complete your profile and press Update
2. Institutions not supported by the AAF can register by entering your email address and password and clicking register. An email will be sent to your email address with a link, click on this link and your email address will be verified. You can now login. Retype your email address and password, then go to Account to complete your profile and press Update.

Important: For all review projects, you need to have reviewers/collaborators all signed up as users in the Portal before you can send the review. Send them the web address to register and set up their profile: https://www.peerreviewportal.com

How do I create my profile?

Go to Account fill in your personal details. Select Join an Institution and choose your institution, then choose the appropriate faculty. You can select multiple faculties. Your account can also include multiple institutions.

If your institution or faculty does not exist, you can add these.

How do I manage faculties?

If you would like institution administrator status, send an email request to the Peer Review Portal Team at: info@peerreviewportal.com

As an institution administrator, you can add faculty administrators to monitor faculty reviews.
Only the institution administrator has full access to all reviews across the institution.

To manage your faculty or institute click on Manage. You can choose to join or leave a faculty.

Click on Administrators box-View all to view all institute and faculty administrators.
You can add or revoke administrators.

Click on Reviewers box-View all and you will see all your institution users that have registered on the portal.

What online support is available?

Go to Support to view YouTube presentations on the different features of the Portal such as:

• Register for Peer Review; 
• Account configuration; 
• How to add project collaborators; 
• How to invite reviewers and upload material

There are PowerPoint presentations on peer review of assessment inputs and outputs and program review to support your review

The Peer Review Portal Team have a blog on the Portal with recent updates and queries answered.

Any other feedback or questions: Please email the Peer Review Portal Team at: info@peerreviewportal.com

How do I set up a new review?

Important: For all review projects, you need to have reviewers/collaborators all signed up as users in the Portal before you can send the review. Send them the web address to register and create their profile: https://www.peerreviewportal.com

1. Click on Outgoing. Click on New Project
2. Select a review project type: 
• Peer review of assessment inputs/outputs [available]; 
• Program Review [available]; 
• Benchmarking [coming soon] and 
• Professional Body Review [later].
3. Please do not change your project type or you may lose pre-prepared work
4. Select your institution, country, field of education, and classification level
• When creating a New Project, fill in faculty/department, course and unit names provided
• If linking to a previous project, select from the drop-down box the previous project and fill in the details of new project.
5. Invite Collaborators. They assist you with putting the project together and have the same permissions and access as you, including adding files, editing questions and viewing final reports. To add a collaborator, click + button and you can do a search.
• When adding collaborators make sure that you invite them all at the same time, otherwise additional collaborators will remove any existing collaborators.
• Collaborators will receive an invitation through email.
6. You have two options to invite reviewers:
1. Invite them directly and click + button and do a search and select their name
2. Invite institutions and allow them to provide reviewers for you, search from the institutions, and select the faculty.
   
   You have the option to advise the institution on how many reviewers you would like.
   Reviewers can be internal and/or external.
7. The Portal will automatically save your new review project. If you decide that the review project details are no longer useful, just change them to another review project. The Portal is effectively a ‘sandpit’ till you decide to pay for the review project.
8. You can make as many changes as you like prior to paying for the review project.

How do I set up a review template?

For each review project, you need to choose a measure for the review template for example

• 5 scale; 
• yes, but/no, but; 
• and custom.

For peer review of assessment (inputs/outputs), there are existing templates that you can upload or you can customise your own templates.

Please be aware that changing the project measure will delete any questions already configured in your review template.

The Portal provides an overview of the selected review template. You can add questions or delete questions.

You can include the completion date for the review and view the project summary.

How do I upload review materials?

Drag and drop your files onto the desktop provided or click the cloud icon to bring up your file manager.

You can add your assessment tasks and give these a name and upload assessment task documentation.
You can add as many assessment tasks as you like.
You can link assessment tasks to student work samples.
It is optional to add a grade or mark to the Portal.
Files are automatically saved on upload.
Videos of student work can be uploaded through a link to YouTube.

How do I pay for the project?

Once the project is ready, you can proceed to payment using a credit card.
Payment is $420+GST for one review project type, which includes as many collaborators and reviewers as you like and it includes 5 unit reviews for one year.

You will receive an invoice when you check out.

Reviewers do not pay. Collaborators can choose to pay or leave this for a review project owner.

How do I access review material and reports?

You need to ensure that you are registered as a user on the Peer Review Portal to be a reviewer.

You will receive an invitation in your email inbox. Click onto the invitation and go to Incoming.

Click on the project under review and you can simply answer the questions. Click on Review Materials and you will see all the materials to assist you with the review. Complete the review.

When a project is marked completed in Outgoing, click on edit and you will be able to view the review report

It includes both quantitative and qualitative data from the review which can be downloaded.

How secure is the Portal?

All data is secured in an Australian data warehouse in the Cloud.
You can only view your own review projects which also depends on the level of access you have for roles such as an institution administrator, faculty administrators, collaborators and reviewers.

You only invite collaborators and reviewers based on your choice.
No-one else can access your data.

How do I contact for more information?

Contact the Peer Review Portal Team at Cyberdesign Works (http://cdwsydney.com.au) for technical questions about the Peer Review Portal. info@peerreviewportal.com

For institutional support for setting up the Portal, please contact Dr Sara Booth, University of Tasmania on Sara.Booth@utas.edu.au

Who owns the Portal?

Cyberdesign Works have developed and conceptualised the Portal.
It is owned by a private company, Online Peer Solutions Pty Ltd, set up to support the HE sector.

Calibration Release

Today we are pleased to announce the release of our Program Review - Calibration feature.

Calibration is an additional Project Review step for the nominated Program Review Chair person who was specified when creating your Program Review project.

Once all Panel members have submitted their Program Review questionnaires, and made their recommendations for Areas of Good Practise, Areas for Improvement and Areas for Further Development, the Calibrate button will appear on the Chair persons Incoming project.

The Chair Person will then be presented with a Calibration Welcome screen, which outlines the number of responses to be Calibrated and what to expect in the following screens. 

Now the fun starts. 

The Chair person will then go through the process of Stacking the various responses submitted by the Panel members. Stacks are created by dragging and dropping cards on top of each other until all cards are Stacked into groups of similar themes, concepts or categories. 

Exactly how the Chair person chooses to group the cards is entirely up to them. 

We understand that this stacking process can potentially be very time consuming, for this reason we have provided a simple Auto Stack function. 

By clicking the Auto Stack button, and accepting the warning dialogue, the cards will be automatically grouped into 3x Stacks based on their category.

Areas of Good Practise

Areas for Improvement

Areas for Further Development

Each Stack has the option to View the cards within, or Unstack all cards completely. 

If you View Stack, you can remove individual cards from the stack, and then drag and drop it into another stack if desired. 

Once all cards are Stacked, the Chair person will then be required to submit Calibrated Responses based on each Stack. 

Multiple Calibrated Responses can be submitted for each Stack. 

Once all Stacks have been reviewed, and Calibrated Responses provided for each, a Summary screen is displayed. 

If all looks good, press the Submit button and the Calibration process is complete. 

All Calibrated responses are then made available to the Project Owner via their Outgoing Project report page. 

We hope you enjoy using this feature as much as we enjoyed building it. 

Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions for its improvement. 

Cheers,

The Peer Support Portal Team