Peer Review made Easy

Aropä is a web-based system which supports peer review activities. In a peer-review activity, an instructor sets students an assignment. After students have submitted their assignment, they comment on the submissions from other students. Once the review process is complete, students read the comments their peers have made on their own submission.

The Aropä Summary document (May 2018) gives more detailed information about the system's design and use, as well as comments and testemonials from current users.
Aropä is used extensively at the University of Auckland, Glasgow University and Queen's University, Canada. It is also used world-wide, with regular use at the following institutions:
  • Franklin University
  • Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences
  • University of Economics in Bratislava
  • Curtin University, Australia
  • University of the West of England
  • Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Madrid
  • Washington & Lee University
  • Matej Bel University, Slovakia
In the 2020/21 academic year, over 16% of the entire student body of the University of Glasgow used the system to review their peers' work.
Aropä has been used in classes in the following subject areas:
  • Accounting
  • Anatomy
  • Anthropology
  • Business Project Planning
  • Chemistry
  • Chinese Studies
  • Civil Engineering
  • Classics
  • Clinical Education
  • Commercial Law
  • Computing
  • Engineering
  • English Language
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Film studies
  • Geology
  • Marine Biology
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Media Studies
  • Medicine
  • Molecular Science
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Pharmacology
  • Physics
  • Physiology
  • Physiotherapy
  • Politics
  • Population Health
  • Professional Skills
  • Project Management
  • Public Health
  • Research Skills
  • Software engineering
  • Veterinary Science

We have two publications and a technical report summarising our experiences with Aropä:
Other publications on Aropä include:
  • ● Helen Purchase & John Hamer. Aropä: peer review made easy. (in e-learning Excellence Awards: An Anthology of Case Histories. Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, pp.173-184. ISBN 9781911218166, October 2016)
  • ● John Hamer, Helen Purchase, Andrew Luxton-Reilly & Paul Denny. A comparison of peer and tutor feedback. (Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, March 2014)

The earliest publication, which introduced the system, was:
  • ● John Hamer, Catherine Kell & Fiona Spence. Peer assessment using Aropä. (in ACE '07 Proceedings of the ninth Australasian conference on Computing education, 66:43-54, January 2007)

Several instructors have published articles or given presentations on their use of Aropä: