Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a portfolio directed towards their professional
development in which the course literature and
lectures were processed in the form of lecture
and literature comments. The other task was to
outline a pedagogical issue of interest for their
future profession, and to plan and conduct a field
study on this matter to be presented in the form
of a written 10-page research report.
No pre-planned activities were cancelled due
to the implementation of the peer assessment ele-
ment; the overall structure was left unchanged.
We created our workshop area in FirstClass in
addition to the pre-planned course message boards
where both the peer assessment preparation and
the peer assessment procedure were to take place.
The students were to work through five workshops
during the course. Since the number of participants
on this course was quite large (60 students) they
were assigned to smaller study groups of 7-8 par-
ticipants and each group had their own discussion
forum for the workshop activities.
The workshop element was designed with an
initial focus on making the students more aware
of implicit dimensions of the course criteria as a
stepping stone for peer reviewing each other's
course work later on in the course. There were
no set rules for how often and to what degree the
students had to participate in the workshop and
the students were informed that their postings
would not be assessed for grading purposes. We
took a risk here that the students would choose to
devote a minimum amount of time to engage in
the peer assessment process. For example Prins
et al. (2005) points out that limited participation
by students in peer assessment assignments is a
risk in the online environment. We decided that
we wanted to see if the design and content of the
peer assessment element would be enough to
trigger the students' willingness to devote time
to this. As extra motivation for participation we
also included a self and peer evaluation task to
be included in the portfolio, in which the students
were asked to refer to their own and other's post-
ings in the workshops while reflecting on what
value this had during the learning process.
Each workshop was open for postings on the
discussion board for about five days to enable
all students to find time to participate. The peer
assessment task was designed as five steps in the
form of workshops.
•
In
Workshop I
the students were introduced
to the idea of peer assessment. They were
asked to reflect upon course criteria in the
light of the Higher Education Act and the
Higher Education Ordinance and discuss
what these overarching steering docu-
ments meant for an understanding of the
course criteria. The aim of the workshop
was to establish some kind of consensus
about criteria.
In
•
Workshop II
the students were to apply
their shared understanding of course criteria
by assessing two example texts. They were
then to present the results of their review
of the texts and discuss and motivate their
judgements. The students were tutored by
questions aimed to stimulate further reflec-
tion over how the criteria were to be un-
derstood and how to use them in practice.
They were also asked to try to identify sim-
ilarities and differences in their individual
understandings, and discuss eventual re-
finements in how the criteria could be un-
derstood and put into practise. At the end
of workshop II the students were to draw
conclusions from each other's experiences
and their discussions and decide upon what
criteria to use for peer assessing each other
during the process of completing their final
examination products.
In
•
Workshop III
the students were each to
publish a first draft of a literature comment
to be assessed by the rest of their study
group and by this means be provided with
comments from their peers upon strengths
and areas in need of improvement.
In
•
Workshop IV
the students presented their
Search WWH ::
Custom Search