Group Peer Assessment

We were recently given a task by a course team here at UCS to look at how they could incorporate technology to enhance their assessment model for group work which involved a peer assessment element.

The first tool that springs to mind is the Self/Peer Assessment Tool (SPAT) that's available in BlackBoard (LearnUCS), however after our initial meeting with the team it became clear this wasn't going to work.

The SPAT in LearnUCS allows a textual assignment or activity to be distributed, depending on settings, to the rest of the cohort, each student being given one or more of the other students work to grade and feedback upon. Students can be given model answers to support textual questions and help aid them in their peer assessment.

The course team however needed a solution that would work for groups of students. Where each group would peer assess each individual in their group without it being anonymous.

These were the requirements:

• 7 Groups
• Each group working on a Poster
• Need to assess the final product (Poster)
• Need to assess the process of collaborative working
• Peer assess each other by giving a score (%) based on input to the group work
• A process to highlight students not pulling their weight in the group

Eldan Goldenberg - http://flic.kr/p/8vzJMD

The flow would be each group working together on a poster, at the end, a practical presentation of the poster will reward 20% of the final mark from the lecturers observation. 10% of the final mark will be given to students to distribute between themselves based on who they feel contributed to the creation of the poster activity. The other 70% of the students mark is built up through other assignments.

The Elevate Team huddled and came up with a mixed face to face and online solution for the course team. This consisted of using two tools available in LearnUCS.

• Group Wikis
• Journal Tool

Our proposed methodology would consist of each individual student using the Journal Tool to record reflective pieces throughout the creation process of the poster, private to themselves and the lecturer. Using the Journal Tool in this way gives the student the ability to reflect on the positive elements of the activity and highlight any other members of the groups lack of involvement.

The group would collectively add-to and amend the Group Wiki page a draft of the final poster, this would essentially become a 'working' area for the group. A lecturer could then go into the revision history and check individuals or groups activity.

The face to face element of this process would see each group of students presenting their poster to their lecturers, after this they would be instructed to sit in their group and discuss (Peer Assessment) who would get a cut of the final percentage for their contribution to the poster. The students would be advised that if they all feel they contributed equally, the score is spread evenly. Once an agreed final score is set, a designated 'scribe' would then update the group wiki page with the scores.

If someone has been highlighted as not contributing to the group activity, a lecturer can support students concerns by reviewing the revision history on the wiki and the journal tool where they could see if students raised specific issues.

This helps weave the process through many elements, a technology enhanced working or draft area, a reflective element and a face to face peer assessment element of which the result is posted back to an online environment to close the activity down.

We will work with the course team to make sure this process is supported and will gather their feedback at the end of the activity.

How do you design social learning into your e-learning activities?

The Elevate Team ran a workshop for the PGCHEP Module 2 course on how a lecturer or course team might design social learning into their e-learning activities.

In terms of impact, during the workshop we finished the curriculum design with one lecturer which focused on peer assessment and they implemented it a day later !!

The following discusses the use of the peer assessment tool, and more broadly the workshop.

Their design was relatively straightforward, it was a formative assessment, which fed into their summative work. Motivation included, if they didn’t complete this activity marks would be deducted from their final summative portfolio.

The student needed to create two CAD design activities based on some clear objectives and marking scheme. The output would be two PDF files. They need to share these with their colleagues for peer assessment and feedback against the marking criteria (quantitative and qualitative). This process would help the student reflect on their own submission. The submission and evaluation needed to complete within 7 hours (one working day). The lecturer wanted to ensure they have all done the activity, but not release the feedback. This would be undertaken on a 1-2-1 basis, and would include other comments from the lecturer and a “lay person”.

These aims were met using the LearnUCS peer assessment tool.

The following screenshot (student names and numbers removed) show the views for the lecturer. It lists the evaluator (student name and number), list of submissions evaluated (student names), the marks for individual evaluations, and the average mark the evaluator gave across all their evaluations.

Another feature is the ability to review the results by individual. This allows the lecture to see the overall result for an individual, and drill down into a specific peer assessment by an evaluator. This is illustrated in the following two screenshot

If you’d like to discuss if the Peer Assessment tool is appropriate for you and how to use it, please contact the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk)

In terms of the workshop. The broad aims of the workshop were to enable the individual to answer within their context and understanding the following questions;

• What do we mean by social constructivism?
• Is social constructivism a relevant approach to your learning, teaching and assessment models?
• What are the key characteristics which would need to be designed into your e-learning activities?
• How might these translate into meaningful learning activities?
• How might you implement them within your e-learning activities?

The workshop was flipped, so the pre-session activity was to read the following two short articles on social constructivism. After which, they need to explain what is social constructivism, and describe two or three situations on their courses where social constructivist learning occurs (You should spend no more than one hour on the activity)

• Powell, K. & Kalina, C. (2009) ‘Cognitive and Social Constructivism: Developing Tools for an Effective Classroom’, Education 130 (2) pp. 241-250
• University College Dublin Teaching and Learning. (2014) Education Theory: Constructivism and Social Constructivism. Available at: http://www.ucdoer.ie/index.php/Education_Theory/Constructivism_and_Social_Constructivism (Accessed: 8th January 2014).

This meant in the session we can test this understanding, and then apply this through hands-on activities. Including the following three scenarios (using a timeline and learning design sequence framework);

• Social learning using Clickers in the classroom (formative feedback)
• Group project work using LearnUCS (wiki and journal)
• Enhanced learning networks using Twitter (informal learning)

The workshop slides are available from: