We kicked off the University of Bath’s e-learning summer seminar series today with a luncht
ime seminar on using Moodle for Peer Assessment; something we’ve been doing a lot over the last 12 months with our distance learners in the Faculty of Engineering. If you missed it you can view a (shorter) video version of the presentation here; sorry if my mug gets in the way of things every now and again 
It’s around 12 minutes long:
http://wms.bath.ac.uk/live/LTEO/SSS1.wmv
We had a fine mix of educators present from a diverse range of disciplines (from physiotherapy to languages to maths), and they asked all the right questions plus some I wasn’t expecting too 
Apart from talking about the Moodle workshop module itself and what it offers, we also got down to the nitty-gritty of how best to introduce students to peer assessment, and how to encourage them to take part. We considered the pros and cons of making peer assessment mandatory and/or awarding such an activity a proportion of the summative grade.
We also talked about what expectations we might have of the outcome of a first stab at peer assessment, and how we might present these to students, and we also talked about the levels of tutor support and guidance that might be appropriate in different circumstances.
It was especially interesting to hear from Sian Coxall (School for Health) about an online activity the School are piloting with their distance learners where students work together to develop their own criteria for a low-stakes assessment. It was also great to hear from Keith Graham, a physiotherapist in the Department of Sports Development, about some face-to-face peer-assessment and role-play work he’s been involved with.
There was quite a lot of interest in setting up a special interest group within the University for those interested in innovative assessment practices; this is something Andy Ramsden and I have discussed before so watch this space…
At the end of the seminar we shared ideas for how we might use peer assessment in our own contexts; these included getting peer feedback on a range of projects and assignment drafts prior to final submission, low-stakes peer assessment of presentations in the School for Health, assessment of videos of student performance in Physiotherapy, peer assessment of students’ websites on Maths topics, and as an induction activity for Masters’ level programmes.
All in all I personally found it a very useful session and I hope all the participants did too Please don’t let the conversation stop here; regardless of whether you were there today, please leave a comment with any questions, experiences or ideas you’d care to share!
11 responses so far ↓
Hi Lindsay,
The seminar sounded just great. And naturally I am glad to hear that the session focussed on Peer Assessment per se. I’m sure you would have really engaged them given that I have seen you present before.
I liked the other ideas you harvested and fed back too
Quick question. Just wondering why you are thinking of constraing the set-up of an Innovative Assessment? Peer Assessment? Peer Learning SIG to Bath. What about setting something up that goes beyond Bath? I’m convinved there will be lot’s of interest in this type of activity (Innovative Assessment, Peer Assessment, Peer Learning, Peer Teaching …) and given that you know I am also interested in this area would be happy to come on board and help out.
I can envsion lots of good things coming from this. Workshops, practice notes, case studies seminars etc.
Go on, be brave !
have a think and let me know
Mark
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lindsayjordan Reply:
May 14th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Hi Mark, thanks for this
I guess innovative assessment is just such a huge area I was imagining that there would already be goodness knows how many groups and networks set up on the topic already. Having said that, I would hope and expect that increasing this kind of activity at Bath would also increase the amount of ‘buzz’ coming out of AND coming in.
Thanks for volunteering to come to Bath and run a workshop on Peer Teaching – I’ll get my people to talk to your people
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lindsayjordan Reply:
May 14th, 2009 at 8:45 am
…obviously I meant ‘coming out of BATH and coming in’
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Enjoyed watching the video. The moodle workshop has proved a great hit with our students and developing criteria to assess students by works really well. Peer assessment is not used enough in schools and it is something the students really enjoy doing. Students can upload a variety of tasks for assessment rather than the one “powerPoint” design. It places them firmly at the centre of their own learning and gives then a far greater involvement in how they learn
Was wondering how much you have looked at the opportunities of using the criteria assessment/rubric and using the Lesson features for developing next steps with students?
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lindsayjordan Reply:
May 17th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Hi Gideon,
One of my colleagues has been playing with the Lesson feature but I haven’t dipped my toes in those waters yet. Have you used it?
One thing we’d really like to move on to it an activity where the students collaboratively develop the assessment criteria themselves. We’d probably do this step-wise; giving them the criteria the first time, then inviting them to comment on them and suggest appropriate changes, and finally getting them to produce them from scratch. Difficult thing to do with distance learners as you could really do with 100% participation to make it fair & democratic, etc.
Difficult, but not impossible, huh…?
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We have not really dipped our toes in the water but Mary Cooch has done some stuff http://www.twitter.com/moodlefairy and has an excellent youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq3das503-Q explaining it
We woudl really like to see assignment templates where you can create assignment mark grids rather than the “blank” page you get to write on. It woudl really motivate/push on/remove excuses for staff. Not sure how to go about doing this and really need to find a cheap developer
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lindsayjordan Reply:
May 17th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Do you mean the grade editor? I think I agree; we recently tried to address this by providing templates that the tutors can paste into the editor; neither of the tutors we offered this to have taken up the suggestion. But I guess we’ll be discussing this with them when we do the module reviews next month, with a view to finding a mutually pleasing solution!
It looks like Moodle 2.0 will have a new ‘Feedback’ module…
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pDVzrUsKEBnChh0nn7-FTYA
Maybe this will allow us to set templates for feedback?
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Gideon Williams Reply:
May 18th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Sorry Lindsay – how did you go about making the templates for the Grade Editor? Do you have any examples to look or you might sneekily send me if that is not too much trouble?
Gideon
williams@perins.hants.sch.uk
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lindsayjordan Reply:
May 18th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Hi Gideon,
Ha – very low-tech; we just sent them a word file with a comment section and a criteria table that had all formatting removed; I’ll send you a copy, it’s nothing flashy
We reminded them that if they pasted from the template they would have to ’select all’ and click ‘clean Word HTML’ to make it look all right in Moodle… and I suspect these mysterious words scared them off! There appears to be a general feeling that turning marking around is so time-pressured that it is not an appropriate time to learn something new. However, the tutor does have plenty of opportunity to repeat or practice a new procedure in a short space of time, and I suspect this is why developments in our tutors’ marking practices have been the easiest and fastest developments to embed.
Hi Lindsay,
I work (eLearning Designer) at the University of Canberra in Australia. A colleague found your video and made me aware of it. I’ve passed it to a computer science lecturer who wants to take his peer review sessions, currently done f2f in tutes, online. I think the same level of engagement is difficult to match, but this does make some f2f elements possible online in a nice framework, and adds the online touch in terms of asynchronouse communication accordance’s. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks from down-under for making the video!
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hi lindsay
find u r blog by …chance
i m a graphic design teacher at telaviv
i m sending u my blog. it s a place where i m sharing student work. opening to discution and review, so after presenting a work in class people can still have the chance to learn from it
hope u find it interesting
ronny
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