Preparing students as effective assessorsEnabling learning beyond graduation

David Nicol Professor of Higher Education

Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement (CAPLE]Director, Peer project (www.reap.ac.uk)

Project Facilitator, QAA Enhancement Themes: AssessmentUniversity of Strathclyde

Enhancement Themes Conference: March 2nd 2011

Feedback in higher education

Mainly thought of from teacher perspectiveStudents [NSS] – timeliness, detail and clarityTeachers: workload, student engagementPeer feedback innovations - more feedback, timely, no extra workload with software support, mimics feedback receipt in employment settingsBut thinking about delivery still locks us into seeing feedback as transmission

Students as feedback constructors

Constructivist perspective – the benefitsProducing is cognitively more demanding than receiving: you cannot be passive Students process/reprocess criteria from multiple perspectiveSee how others tackle work and learn that quality can be produced in different waysDevelop disciplinary thinking – constructing explanations Enables students to better assess own work: same skillsDevelop judgement – necessary for employment and life beyond university.All graduate attribute development requires that student learn to make evaluative judgements

Examination of module and course approval documents

Rare to find a learning outcome of the following type:

At the end of this module:…you will be able to evaluate critically the quality and/or impact of your own work…you will be able to evaluate critically the quality and impact of the work produced by others

seehttp://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/documents/G21C/Assessment_150910.pdf

Example of peer feedbackPsychology class• Students write an essay on one topic from three related

to child development • Each student provides feedback on three essays in

another topic anonymously using a set of questions and ratings provided by the teacher.

• The rubric: write a short summary of the essay, comment on and rate (four point scale) the structure, arguments, evidence, writing, and suggest ways of improving the essay.

• Students receive peer reviews of their own essays• They then review, comment on and rate their own essay

using the same or similar rubric.• Students given marks for participating in the task, for

their essay and for their own review of it.• Finally, students provided with 3 reviews from other

students and asked to rate them and comment on how useful they thought this would be to an author.

• All activities supported by peer review software (e.g. Aropa)

Principles of effective peer feedback

TASKIf you were asked to compile a list of principles to guide academics implementing peer feedback what would be on that list? To clarify the principle you might wish to provide an example of its implementation.

How might you apply these peer review

ideas in your own context?

DiscussionWhat might you do to implement these ideas?What issues do you anticipate?

Peer Review in Education Evaluation [PEER]

Peer project is funded by JISC (till July 20110 and led by the University of Strathclyde. The aims are to:

Review evidence base for peer reviewDevelop educational designs for peer review (and self-review)Identify software support for peer reviewPilot implementations of peer review with large student numbersProduce guidelines for HE/FE – why do it, how to do it, pitfalls and solutions and software possibilities.

see http://www.reap.ac.uk/peer.aspx