Getting runs on the board with student group work

The affordances of Online Peer Evaluation tools

• Tim Allen (no relation to the Tool Man)• Educational Developer at the School of

Mining UNSW• Career Highlights:

• 5 years at the Learning and Teaching units at Macquarie and UNSW

• ESL/EFL teacher in Sydney and Asia for 10 years

• Education: MAppLing(TESOL), BLitt (English), BBSc (Psych)

Introduction

Peer teaching – students learn from each otherDevelop important interpersonal skills: cooperation, communication, leadership, negotiation, conflict resolution, etc.Student-centred learning: taking more responsibilityPassive knowledge is activated by testing it against other’s understandings and collaborative activitiesTo prepare them for skills and qualities required in their future careers and lives

Why Use Group Projects?

UNSW Graduate Attributes

Students don't understand what they should do even after it has been explainedStudents complain about their groups or make groups with their friends onlySome groups are very active and cooperative while some are very passive and quietDifficult for the instructor to know what is really happening within the groupStudents complain about their group members' effortStudents complain that their group grade is unfair they are being penalised by weaker team members

Group work: common challenges

Provide a handout with an overview schedule and detailed instructionsRequire students to hand in a project plan and regular progress reportsExplain why group work is important and point out learning objectives and graduate attributesTry to resolve interpersonal problems quicklyExplain the grading rationale and method

Strategies to manage challenges

The problem of group grading: Online Peer Evaluation tools

1Create a rubric (assessment criteria and standards) for students to use2Create an assessment and schedule its opening and closing times3Towards the end of the project, students login and anonymously peer-assess and (optionally) self-assess each other; the teacher also gives each group a mark4From these self-assessment marks, each student gets a peer-assessment weighting, e.g. 1.15The weighting is multiplied by the group mark to produce each student's final grade for the group project6Optionally students can login and review their anonymous feedback

Online Peer Evaluation: How It Works

Group projects are commonDiverse international student body“SPARK PLUS” “WebPA”

Case Study: Trialling a New Tool at Mining UNSW

Problems:oComplicated interfaceoNo integration with LMS: no SSO, manual user enrolment, manual gradingoTime-consuming and fiddly

SPARK PLUS

Advantages: •Integrated with the UNSW LMS (Moodle): SSO, automatic enrolment & grade publishing•More intuitive interface•Open source software: can be customised locally

WebPA

Q&A

Any Questions?