Teaching Students to Peer Assess On-line

A few days ago I was making a coffee in the Computer Science and IT common room at ANU*. I fell into conversation with PHD researcher Dr. Sabrina Caldwell on the topic of education and IT. While she is researching digital imaging, Sabrina and her supervisor, Professor Tom Gedeon, have been working on how to teach web design on-line. In a recent paper they found that simple formative tasks can be used to train students in how to peer assess (Caldwell & Gedeon, 2015). They suggest this could be used in large on-line courses (so called "MOOCs").

The idea is you use small quizzes and tasks to train the students, so they can then assess deeper learning in larger assessment tasks by other students.If this effect can be confirmed by refuter research, it could point the way to low cost on-line cruses which provide high quality leaning, equal to, or superior to conventional face-to-face university programs.

In my "ICT Sustainability" course I gave the students small tasks and use peer assessment. This worked well, but it did not occur to me that the students would be learning peer assessment as part of the process.

References

Caldwell, S., and Gedeon, T.D., (2015). Optimising Peer Marking with Explicit Training: from Superficial to Deep Learning, 1st International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Valencia, Spain, paper DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd15.2015.441. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300487262_Optimising_Peer_Marking_with_Explicit_Training_from_Superficial_to_Deep_Learning


* The CSIT common room is a little like Star Trek Captain's Table. It was designed with two doors: one for ANU Research School of Computer Science staff and one for CSIRO IT Researchers (now Data 61). This was designed for bureaucratic requirements that each organization have its own common room. But the dividing wall was omitted, so once through either door, people freely mingle. As well as current ANU and CSIRO staff, there could be people from anywhere in the world, researching just about anything.

Peer Review and Teaching as Collaborative Activity

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra where Ian Solomonides, Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre at Macquarie  University is speaking on Peer Review and Teaching as  Collaborative Activity. He raised issues of external peer review and professional development. However, I suggest that incentives for staff need to be considered. Teaching is a secondary consideration for most academics and their institutions, after research. Academics are selected and promoted primarily based on their research publications and funding attracted. It may not get the academic a job to emphasise their expertise in teaching, they just need to be adequate. Institutions want efficient teaching, preferably using on-line automated tools and casual tutors. Universities have found they can market courses based on the institution’s research reputation, even though this has no relationship to the quality of teaching.

Dr. Solomonides suggested the idea of teaching as making learning possible, as well as organising and telling. This is a routine part of teaching courses now, particularly those of e-leaning.

My suggestion would to use the peer approach with those staff who are most likely to be responsive, which are those receiving low student feedback scores, new and adjunct staff.

Also it is needs to be acknowledged that teaching is only a second profession for most academics. The academics are first of all a researcher (or for adjuncts are working professionals). Institutions could encourage teaching development trough the academics' primary discipline, so this will be seen as directly relevant by their peers. As an example, I am a member of the Australian Computer Society, which has an interest in the education of computer professionals (it accredits university coursers), so  teaching is seen as part of the discipline.

In addition, there is the opportunity to improve the kills of teachers while transitioning to e-learning.

Dr. Solomonides mention the "Carpe Diem MOOC" Swinburne University free Open Online Course on effective learning design.