Peer Review and Active Participation in a Large Classroom with Annemette Kjærgaard

How do you design meaningful assessment in a course with 160 students? In our third and final Lunch & Learn session on the new Active Participation exam format, Annemette Kjærgaard, Professor MSO from the Department of Management, Society and Communication (MSC), shared how she tackled this challenge in her large, mandatory bachelor course Personlighedspsykologi.

Set in a first-semester class with a pass/fail structure, Annemette’s redesign leaned into feedback and structure, giving students a clear path for engaging critically without relying on traditional grading.

In the session, Annemette talked about:

• How the course combines structured group assignments with guided peer feedback
• Why she sees teaching as active participation too and how she designed her lectures and exercises accordingly
• What surprised her most about student engagement in the feedback sessions

“The teaching needs to be active participation as well,” she shared, explaining why she prioritized interaction and discussion throughout. The exam format included two key elements: a group-written assignment and a facilitated peer feedback workshop, where students evaluated and learned from each other’s work using set criteria.

By preparing students carefully with structured prompts, space to reflect on their own groupwork, and training in how to give constructive feedback Annemette noticed a shift:

“They were very well prepared for the feedback sessions… I was actually positively surprised how engaged they were in reading the other’s assignment and how much they reflected on what they had learned also about their own assignments.”

Watch the full session with Annemette below:

If you are interested in the new “Active Participation Format” or are planning to implement it, we invite you to our upcoming workshop on “Teaching with Active Participation Format” on Monday, 26th of May from 09.00am to 12.00pm.