e-assessment (f)or learning

Also at the ‘More effective assessment and feedback’ meeting on Wednesday, Simon Bates spoke about the use of ‘Peerwise’ at the University of Edinburgh. Peerwise (see http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) enables students to write their own assessment questions, and to share and discus them with their colleagues. Physics students at Edinburgh have written some excellent and imaginative questions. Simon rightly described the work as exciting and typically of the Edinburgh Physics Education Research Group, they are trying to evaluate its impact.  So far they have found that students who engage with Peerwise are likely to do better than those who don’t . This is hardly surprising – better motivated students are likely both to engage with Peerwise and to do better. More surprising is the fact that students at all levels seem to benefit – it’s not just the best or the weakest. Most students also seem to like Peerwise.

I was excited and intrigued by Simon’s talk and look forward to hearing more. I can see that writing your own e-assessment questions will be a fun and motivating experience for students. But how much do they really learn in doing this? Is it really assessment? I’m not sure.

Listening to Patricia Cartney from Middlesex University speak at the Centre for Distance Education Conference last week made me think about peer assessment. Apologies to those who have been working in this area for year, my thoughts are probably terribly naive.

Students comment on other students’ work and benefit is claimed both from the fact that students are receiving feedback from others and from the fact that they are giving feedback to others. I wonder which of these is more significant? I asked the question and Patricia said she thinks it is the latter; that seems likely, but is has deep implications. To my mind it is yet more evidence that we (teachers) are waiting a lot of time in giving feedback that students don’t even understand, let alone use. As one of Patricia’s students said, the peer assessment process ‘wasn’t just about giving feedback to other people it was also whilst I was giving the feedback I was questioning my own work and learning from other peoples’ styles’.