Peergrade is a startup from Denmark that has developed an online software to simplify and improve the quality of peer review assessment sessions. The platform allows teachers create assignments and then ensures distribution of hand-ins between the students, ensuring that everyone gets feedback.
Originally bootstrapped, Peergrade has gone a long way. They have improved the quality of their product a great deal and established presences in major educational establishments in Scandinavia (University of Copenhagen, DTU etc.). And recently the team has received backing from impressive group of investors – Nordic Makers.
Unveiled this September, Nordic Makers comprises the likes of David Helgason (founder of Unity), Klaus Nyengaard (former CEO of Just Eat), and Hampus Jakobsson (co-founder of TAT, the mobile UI company acquired by Blackberry). As well as quite a few other notable founders and investors in the Nordic region, writes Tech Crunch.
The idea of Peergrade originates from The Technical University of Denmark, where one of Peergrade’s co-founders David Kofoed Wind had to solve the challenge of ensuring a good quality peer review assignment among 130 students. The key to the platform is its use of “advanced statistical models” to estimate what would be a fair grade and to help eliminate peer bias. It also employs natural language processing for inferring the quality of text feedback between students.
