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Getting started with CoStudy takes under 30 minutes. Here's a step-by-step walkthrough from account creation to your first live evaluation.

Step 1: Create your account. Visit platform.costudy.co/professor and sign up with your institutional email. No credit card required.

Step 2: Connect Canvas. Navigate to Settings > LTI Integration and follow the prompts to connect your Canvas instance. Your institution's Canvas admin may need to approve the LTI connection if it hasn't been set up already.

Step 3: Create a course. Click "New Course" and import your Canvas course. CoStudy will automatically pull your roster and group assignments.

Step 4: Choose an evaluation template. Browse our library of research-validated question templates, or create custom questions. Select which question types to include: behavioral, Likert scale, open-ended, or role-based.

Step 5: Schedule your evaluation. Set the evaluation window (we recommend 5-7 days), configure reminders, and launch. Students receive email notifications through Canvas.

Estimated total setup time: 20-30 minutes for your first course. Subsequent courses take under 10 minutes.

CoStudy integrates natively with Canvas via LTI 1.3, making roster import a one-click process.

How it works: 1. After connecting your Canvas instance, navigate to your course in CoStudy. 2. Click "Import from Canvas," and your full roster, including student names, emails, and group assignments, syncs automatically. 3. If you update groups in Canvas later, click "Sync" to pull the latest changes.

Group sync: CoStudy mirrors your Canvas group sets. If you're using Canvas Groups for team assignments, those same groups appear in CoStudy automatically. You can also create groups manually within CoStudy if you prefer.

No CSV needed: While we support manual CSV import as a fallback, most professors never need it. The Canvas LTI connection handles everything.

Troubleshooting: If your roster doesn't appear, check that the LTI connection is active in your Canvas course settings. If your institution hasn't approved the CoStudy LTI app yet, contact your Canvas admin. Installation takes about 5 minutes on their end.

Once your course and groups are set up, configuring your first peer evaluation takes just a few minutes.

Choose a template: Browse our template library for research-validated question sets. Templates are organized by use case: formative check-in, mid-semester evaluation, final summative evaluation, and role-based evaluation.

Customize questions: Every template is fully editable. Add, remove, or modify questions. Choose from 6 question types: Likert scale, behavioral frequency, open-ended text, ranking, role-specific, and self-assessment.

Set the evaluation window: We recommend a 5-7 day window for students to complete their evaluations. Too short and students feel rushed; too long and they procrastinate.

Configure reminders: CoStudy sends automatic reminders at configurable intervals. We recommend reminders at the midpoint and 24 hours before the deadline.

Student notifications: Students receive an email invitation when the evaluation opens. They click through to Canvas, authenticate with their existing credentials, and complete the evaluation, typically in about 5 minutes.

Pro tip: For your first evaluation, start with a formative check-in at the project midpoint. This gives students a low-stakes introduction to the process and gives you early data on team health.

The team health dashboard is your real-time window into how every team is functioning. Here's what each metric means and when to pay attention.

Overall team health score: An aggregate score (1-5) based on peer ratings across all evaluation dimensions. Scores above 3.5 indicate healthy team dynamics. Scores below 3.0 warrant a closer look.

Completion rate: The percentage of students who have submitted their evaluations. Low completion rates reduce data reliability, so aim for 80%+ before drawing conclusions.

Early warning flags: Orange and red indicators appear when: - A team's health score drops significantly between evaluations - One team member's ratings are significantly lower than their peers - There's high variance in ratings within a team (suggesting internal disagreement)

Individual contribution view: Click into any team to see individual member scores across dimensions like communication, reliability, contribution, and leadership. This view helps you identify specific patterns — not just that a team is struggling, but why.

When to intervene: We recommend reaching out to teams with health scores below 2.5, or when early warning flags appear. A brief check-in ("How's the project going? Any challenges I should know about?") is often enough to get teams back on track.

Student anonymization is CoStudy's most important trust feature. Here's exactly what students can and can't see.

What students see: - Their own aggregated peer feedback scores (averaged across all raters) - Written feedback from peers, with no names attached - Their self-assessment scores alongside their peer scores for comparison

What students don't see: - Which specific teammate gave which rating - Individual rater responses (only aggregated averages) - How their ratings compare to specific individuals on their team

What professors see: - Individual student ratings (who rated whom and how) - Team-level aggregates and trends - Early warning flags for individual students

Why aggregation matters: By averaging ratings across multiple peers (typically 3-5 per team), individual biases are smoothed out. A single harsh rater doesn't define a student's score — the group consensus does.

The retaliation concern: This is the #1 professor worry, and it's why anonymization is non-negotiable. When students know their individual ratings can't be traced back to them, they provide more honest, more useful feedback. Every study on this topic reaches the same conclusion: anonymization improves data quality.

Formative check-ins are shorter, mid-project evaluations designed to surface problems while there's still time to fix them. They're one of CoStudy's most powerful features.

Why formative check-ins matter: A single end-of-semester evaluation tells you what went wrong after it's too late. Formative check-ins at the midpoint (or more frequently) give teams real-time feedback they can act on. Research shows formative assessment produces significantly better outcomes than summative-only approaches.

Setting up a check-in: 1. Create a new evaluation and select the "Formative Check-in" template 2. Check-ins are typically shorter, with 3-5 questions instead of the full evaluation instrument 3. Focus on behavioral questions: "Is this teammate communicating effectively?" rather than overall performance ratings 4. Set a shorter evaluation window (3-5 days)

Recommended cadence: - For a semester-long project: one check-in at week 5-6, one final evaluation at week 14-15 - For shorter projects (4-6 weeks): one check-in at the midpoint, one final evaluation at the end - For intensive projects: weekly or biweekly pulse checks with 2-3 questions

Framing for students: Introduce check-ins as "project health checks" — a way for the team to assess how collaboration is going and identify adjustments before the final push. This framing reduces anxiety and increases honest participation.

CoStudy can export peer evaluation data back to your Canvas gradebook. Here's how the grade flow works.

Automatic grade sync: If you've enabled grade passback in your LTI settings, CoStudy can automatically push evaluation completion scores to a Canvas assignment column. This is useful for participation grading; students receive credit for completing their evaluations.

Manual export: For more nuanced grade adjustments, export evaluation data as a CSV from your CoStudy dashboard. The export includes: - Individual peer evaluation scores for each student - Team averages for comparison - Self-assessment vs. peer assessment comparisons - Written feedback (anonymized)

Grade adjustment strategies: Many professors use peer evaluation data to adjust individual grades within a group project. Common approaches include: - Multiplier method: Each student's group grade is multiplied by a peer evaluation factor (e.g., a student with 90% average peer rating on a B+ project receives an adjusted individual grade) - Additive method: Peer evaluation scores contribute a fixed percentage of the overall project grade - Qualitative adjustment: Professor reviews peer data and makes discretionary adjustments for significant outliers

Important note: CoStudy provides data — you decide how to use it. We don't prescribe a specific grading formula because every course and professor is different.

CoStudy helps you spot team conflicts early. Here's how to interpret the signals and when to step in.

Recognizing conflict signals: - Sudden drop in team health score between evaluations - High variance in peer ratings (teammates disagree significantly about contributions) - One member consistently rated lower across all dimensions - Written feedback mentioning communication breakdowns, missed deadlines, or unequal workload

When to intervene vs. when to let the team work it out: - Intervene when: one student is being isolated, ratings suggest potential bullying or exclusion, or the team's score drops below 2.5 - Let it play out when: ratings show mild variance, the team is still functional, and the issue seems like normal team development

How to intervene: 1. Start with a private, neutral check-in: "I noticed your team's evaluation data suggests some challenges. Can you tell me what's going on?" 2. Don't reveal specific ratings or who said what. Preserve anonymization 3. Help the team establish or revisit ground rules: communication expectations, task distribution, meeting cadence 4. Schedule a follow-up check-in evaluation in 1-2 weeks to see if things improve

The psychological safety connection: Research by Amy Edmondson shows that high-performing teams don't have fewer conflicts — they surface and address conflicts earlier. CoStudy's formative check-ins create the mechanism for that early surfacing.

If you're coming from CATME, here's a step-by-step guide to making the switch.

What carries over: - Your evaluation philosophy and cadence. CoStudy supports the same formative + summative approach - Your question concepts. While the exact BARS instrument is proprietary to CATME, CoStudy's research-validated templates cover the same dimensions (contribution, interaction, keeping the team on track, quality expectations, knowledge/skills/abilities)

What's different: - Canvas integration: CoStudy connects natively via LTI 1.3. No add-on fees, no separate login for students. - Question flexibility: You can customize, add, remove, or create questions from scratch. CATME uses a fixed instrument. - Roles-based evaluation: CoStudy offers role-specific questions, something CATME doesn't support. - Interface: Modern, responsive design that works well on mobile and desktop.

Migration steps: 1. Create your CoStudy account (free) and connect Canvas 2. Import your course roster (one click from Canvas) 3. Browse our template library, which includes templates that map closely to CATME's evaluation dimensions 4. Customize as needed: add role-based questions, adjust Likert scales, or add open-ended prompts 5. Launch your first evaluation

Timeline: Most professors complete migration in a single sitting (30-45 minutes). No IT involvement required for the free tier.

Need help? We offer white-glove migration support. Email hello@costudy.co and we'll walk you through the process and help map your CATME questions to CoStudy equivalents.

The five most common FERPA questions professors ask about using CoStudy with student data.

Q: Is CoStudy FERPA compliant? Yes. CoStudy treats all student data as educational records under FERPA. We act as a "school official" with a legitimate educational interest when processing student data on behalf of professors and institutions.

Q: Who can see my students' evaluation data? Only you (the professor of record) and authorized CoStudy support staff operating under strict confidentiality obligations. Student evaluation data is never shared with other professors, departments, or third parties without explicit authorization.

Q: Does CoStudy sell or share student data? No. We never sell, share, or monetize student data. We never use student data for advertising, marketing profiling, or any purpose other than operating the peer evaluation platform.

Q: What happens to student data when the course ends? Course data is retained for the duration of your active account plus one academic year. This allows you to reference past evaluation data for grade appeals, letters of recommendation, or course improvement. You can request earlier deletion at any time.

Q: Can my institution request deletion of all student data? Yes. Institutions may request deletion of all student data associated with their courses by contacting privacy@costudy.co. Deletion requests are processed within 30 days.

For full compliance documentation, see our FERPA & Compliance page at /compliance.