How can we help students support each other, and become more self-managing, in their assessments? In this case study, Dr Jodie Kleinschafer from the School of Management and Marketing shows you how she went about it with her postgraduate market research students.
What were you trying to achieve?
Students needed to identify a problem, then design a research project and a questionnaire to address that problem. Jodie wanted students to have an authentic experience of pilot testing the questionnaire they had designed. The peer review tool in Interact2 allowed students in the online space to provide feedback on one another’s questionnaires based on the theory they were learning in class. Further, students could use what they were seeing in their peers’ questionnaires to benchmark their own work.
What did it look like?
In this video, Jodie walks through how this worked in practice, the logistics of using the Interact2 peer review tool, how it worked for the students, feedback from students, and her tips and recommendations for others wanting to use peer review.
How can I make this happen?
Jodie recommends working with an Educational Designer to set up the peer review tool, the evaluation criteria and the scaffolding required to make peer review successful. These simple recommendations will start you on the right track:
- CSU’s Interact2 help and support pages have information on the mechanics of setting up a new peer assessment.
- Make sure you provide clear guidance on the assessment and the evaluation criteria, ideally discussing it with students before the peer review takes place.
- As initial attempts at peer review by students can be variable, it helps to have groups of 3 or more so that students receive feedback from more than one person.
- Peer assessment can be used either formatively or summatively – if students are new to peer assessment, it can be valuable to provide the evaluation criteria yourself (or base it on industry standards), and focus on formative assessment. As their experience and abilities improve, involve them in determining the evaluation criteria and show your confidence in them by moving to summative approaches.
You might also like to take a look at this related post: Online peer assessment: An honest account from a first time user.