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clearly found value in this experience.
A first step towards understanding the deeper
meaning of the criteria, and thereby empowering
the students to direct their studies in relation to
this, could be to understand that there are deeper
meanings behind the explicit criteria, and it seems
that these students became aware of this while
interacting in the workshops. This could be a
starting point for them to develop more and deeper
understanding about the world views within the
academy throughout the rest of the programme,
which would consequently provide them with ef-
fective tools to conduct their studies successfully.
The results clearly indicate that peer assessment
in online and distance education could promote
the same growth in the students' reflective and
critical thinking skills as has been found in pre-
vious studies on peer assessment in face to face
environments. It also seems to trigger the students
to devote time and engagement to interaction and
collaboration.
It seems that tutoring and adding challenges to
the students' initial understanding of the criteria is
valuable to help them gain access to the implicit
dimensions of criteria to be used when assessing
each other during the learning process. The idea
of peer assessment preparation is to share the
underlying ideas behind criteria, which means that
the students should not be left alone when trying
to gain this understanding. It was easy enough to
provide such tutoring during this particular course
as additional teacher resources were added since
it was a development project. However this could
become a time consuming element for the teacher
to handle once it is implemented in courses with
no extra resources. On the other hand, much of
the feedback the teacher would have to write to
individuals is handled by the students, and the final
examination products are well processed before
the students hand them in. If the students become
more familiar with the ideas within the academic
culture it could result in improved chances to pass
the final examination. This would cut down much
of the effort the teacher has to make to instruct
these students about what they must improve in
order to pass the examination.
How the preparation for peer assessment, as
well as the peer assessment procedure best should
be designed and carried out in the online environ-
ment seems to be a dilemma. As we still have a
lot of data to analyse and also intend to try other
variations of the assessment design presented in
this article in future courses we are still far from
being able to point to a 'best practice'.
To stay with text based communication could
mean that all students have an equal chance to
make their voice heard and more time to reflect and
formulate their thoughts. But at the same time some
of the data indicates that the students experienced
some limitations in the 'text talk' and wanted to
clear things up in face to face communication. A
possible solution which we will try is to combine
text discussions with a conclusive seminar facili-
tated through audiovisual techniques. This would
give the students both the time for deep reflection
and the possibility to clear up misunderstandings
and tie up loose ends.
Using FirstClass as a platform for communi-
cation must be considered to have worked well
in this course, since the students managed to
collaborate by means of it with such engagement.
This can probably partly be explained by the fact
that the students were already familiar with this
platform. It shows that it might be wise to stick to
the communication tools the students are used to
when implementing a new element such as peer
assessment. Even so, it would be interesting to
investigate if other platforms with better options
for integrating chat functions, audio visual tech-
nique and asynchronous text communication in
the same interface could be even more effective
as a scene for the peer assessment element.
This study was carried out in a course within
a distance education programme, which means
that the students already knew each other and
also had the possibility to meet each other on a
regular basis in a physical environment. It was
also beneficial that the course duration was as
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