Using PeerMark - guidance for staff
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Considerations Won't students take each others' ideas? This is one reservation which is widely held by students. Richard Milne (UCL Centre for Virology) comments on his own experience of setting up peer review activities, "I wasn't worried about students stealing each others' ideas ... you discuss a subject with somebody else and then formulate your own way of thinking about it based on the conversation you’ve had". Students can be encouraged to credit each others' ideas (and a convention can be agreed for circumstances of anonymity). Can students at any level of knowledge carry out good peer reviews? In their A meta-analysis comparing validity of tutor and student assessments, by Falchikov and Goldfinch (2009) could not find evidence found that peer assessment in higher level courses was any more reliable (between different assessors) or valid (according to a standard) than at introductory levels. They speculate that careful preparation by tutors and students can compensate for subject knowledge of students at earlier stages of their courseat introductory levels was as valid as at higher levels. They attribute this to good preparation. Can peer assessment work in every subject area? Although they found some differences, a meta-analysis of academic-peer agreement in marking by Falchikov and Goldfinch did not find (2009) found that subject area had a significant has little effect on the quality validity or reliability of peer assessment. They also report that peer assessment of academic products (e.g. essays, posters) or processes (e.g. oral presentation skills, groupwork participation) tend to have more validity than those in the context of professional practice (e.g. internships). This may be related relate to students' greater experience familiarity with academic products and processes. Their research also suggests that while students are equal to peer-assessment in one new discipline, requiring they may struggle with multi-disciplinary assessments is likely to reduce validity. |
Setting up a new PeerMark Assignment
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In the 'Peermark Assignment' tab of the PeerMark Manager you enter basic information about the activity. Title This will appear for students and should be distinctive and descriptive. Point value (required) The marks available for the peer review itself - i.e. not for the reviewed work. This reflects research findings that asking students to assign numeric marks to their peers exacerbates any sense of risk and brings undue complications and pressure to peer review without bringing any particular learning benefits. Instructions to students Brief guidance about what students should do and why. Start date, Due date, Post date
Make sure you click the 'Save & Continue' button to proceed to the next tab. | ||||||
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Considerations Instructions. Students tend to prefer tutor marking, and may assume that there is a correct mark for their work which is not open to interpretation (McConlogue, 2012). Most researchers into peer assessment (including Bloxham and West, 2007; McConologue, 2014; Nicol, 2010; Orsmond, 2004; Topping, 2009) stress the need to involve students in discussing - and ideally negotiating - the yardstick against which they will measure themselves and others, rather than relying on textual instructions alone. They recommend discussing the rationale, criteria and expectations for peer and/or self review before, during and after the activity. Discussing or negotiating expectations could clarify how much time students were expected to spend on each review and indicate how much feedback should be given, which will help even out the quality and quantity of peer feedback and avoid perceptions of unfairness (Cartney, 2010). Dates.The fact that PeerMark is for formative feedback only raises possibilities for students reviewing draft work at an early relatively unpolished stage which remains open to rewriting on the basis of feedback (Colvill, 2010). In which case, set the Feedback Release Date to allow time for students to make changes in advance of their final credit-bearing submission. The time allowance for the PeerMark activity (i.e. between Start Date and Due Date) should reflect the time students are expected to spend, and allow for their other commitments. |
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On the 'Peermark Assignment' tab there is a link for additional settings. Here's some explanation for the less obvious ones. 'Award full points if review is written' If ticked this means tutors will not be able to mark the reviews and a student will need to meet set requirements for every part of the review in order to get the available marks, on an all-or-nothing basis. If unticked, tutors can assign and differentiate marks for each student's review. 'Allow students to view author and reviewer names' If left unticked, you probably need to remind students not to put any identifying information in the title, filename, or body of their work. 'Paper(s) automatically distributed by Peermark' This sets the number of randomly allocated papers each student has to review. 'Papers(s) selected by the student' This sets the number of papers a student can choose to review. Students can review a combination of allocated and selected papers. 'Require self-review' If checked, a student has to review their own paper. It isn't currently possible to select self review only - the number allocated by PeerMark has to be at least one. |
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Considerations
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Considerations. Does it matter which students review which other students' work? Tutors may If tutors want students to connect students on the basis of interest. As well as matching students through PeerMark, another way to achieve this is to , there are alternative ways to do this. Tutors can manually pair individual students through PeerMark. Alternatively they can set up groups in your the Moodle area and apply these to the Turnitin assignment. AlternativelyOr thirdly, PeerMark has the option of letting students choose the work they review (note though that this introduces the possibility that some students will receive more feedback than others - usually which can be contentious). |
Accessing Peermark reviews
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