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Welcome to PeerWise

PeerWise supports students in the creation, sharing, evaluation and discussion of assessment questions.

What is PeerWise?
Students use PeerWise to create and to explain their understanding of course related assessment questions, and to answer and discuss questions created by their peers.
Any subject
PeerWise is used in a wide range of subjects, including Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Physics, Population Health, Pharmacology, Medicine, and many more...
Free and easy to use
PeerWise is free and very easy to use. Students are presented with a simple, intuitive interface and instructors can easily view student content and monitor participation.
Find out more
Want to get started? View student and instructor guides, watch screencasts of PeerWise in action, and hear what students and instructors think in the Information about PeerWise section.

Why use PeerWise?

PeerWise is simple to use. A new PeerWise repository, accessible by your students, can be created in less than a minute. PeerWise complements existing teaching materials and course organisation, and can help to establish a learning community in your class incorporating collaborative learning and peer tutoring,

Ask...  Challenging students to author their own assessment questions requires them to focus on the important concepts and learning outcomes of a course. Developing effective alternatives encourages students to reflect on possible misconceptions, and explaining the answer to a question in their own words reinforces understanding.
Share...  All student-authored questions, answers and explanations are shared with the class, and can be filtered in a number of ways including by course topic, by quality or difficulty ratings, and by popularity. Students can also discover good questions by following authors who have contributed questions they find useful.
Learn...  Students receive immediate feedback when answering questions, including a summary of previously submitted answers. Answered questions can be evaluated for quality and difficulty, and associated discussion threads enable peer-dialogue around each question. Students can request help from their peers, and can improve question explanations.

Join us!

PeerWise is freely available - if you would like to use PeerWise in a class you are teaching and are ready to get started, please request an instructor account. If you are a student, your instructor will have sent you a link to help you get started.

Instructors / teachers

A PeerWise instructor account will allow you to create your own courses and manage student access. If you would like to use PeerWise in a class you are teaching, simply request an account to get started!
Students

Your instructor or teacher will create a course on PeerWise for you, and will send you a link to get started. Simply follow the link you have been given, or you can choose your institution/school from the list below.

Request an instructor account »

Select your institution or school »

PeerWise institutions, January 2012

The following institutions have log-in pages on PeerWise:

Oceania America Europe Asia Africa

"PeerWise is a terrific tool for encouraging students to "own their own learning" in a sharing and supportive environment. Posing good, thoughtful questions with supporting explanations is an excellent application of critical thinking skills. Similarly, answering questions and offering comments offers opportunities to improve one's communication and self-reflection abilities. MAKING multiple-choice tests requires a much higher level of understanding then simply TAKING them!"

Mark White
Associate Professor of Commerce
University of Virginia, USA

"As well as using PeerWise with my own students in Physics, in my role as Dean of Learning and Teaching I am able to promote effective tools such as PeerWise to take forward the aims of our learning and teaching enhancement strategy. All too often such strategies have grand visions and wise words that leave academic staff at the coalface wondering "All very well, but what can I actually do with my students to deliver this?" PeerWise represents an effective, easy to use tool that instructors can readily appreciate the educational benefits of using."

Simon Bates
Professor of Physics Education
University of Edinburgh, UK

"I definitely love the badge and leader board system! It keeps me online and trying to do more questions."

Johnny Yip (student)
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada
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Learn more

If you would like to find out more about PeerWise, or if you have any questions, please contact us:

peerwise@cs.auckland.ac.nz

Additional information about PeerWise, for both instructors and students, is available in the Information about PeerWise section. Please feel free to browse around!

PeerWise © 2011
The University of Auckland | New Zealand