Abstracts
Aropä and PeerWise: Supporting Student Contributed Pedagogy in Large Classes
Tuesday 5 May 2009, 1400 - 1430
Presenter: John Hamer
The University of Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Presenter Biography
John Hamer is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at The University of Auckland. His research interests include studying how novices learn programming, and the use of contributionbased approaches in University teaching.
Abstract
Aropä and PeerWise are two web-based tools that support collaborative learning in large, undergraduate classes. Aropä manages peer assessment activities, allowing students to take part in double-blind refereeing of their peers’ coursework. PeerWise is a data bank of multi-choice questions contributed, explained and discussed entirely by students.
These systems leverage the latent intellectual capacity of a large class to provide new opportunities for learning. Using Aropä, each student might review three or four essays and receive a corresponding amount of feedback, all within a few days. The immediacy and diversity of the feedback is substantially greater than can be produced by a tutor. While the quality of the reviewing is typically variable, there are affective benefits in challenging students to distinguish between good and poor feedback. By eliminating the stamp of authority and introducing diverse, possibly conflicting feedback, students are required to exercise their critical judgement in deciding what information to accept and reject. Moreover, tutor marking can still be used, and can even be mixed in with the peer reviewing.
PeerWise leverages the energy of a large class in a different way, building an annotated question bank that can contain thousands of multiple-choice questions. Each question is accompanied by an explanation written by the question author, overall quality and difficult ratings assigned by students who have answered the question, and possibly a forum in which misunderstandings and possible improvements are discussed. The question bank thus serves two complementary purposes: a creative medium in which students engage in deep learning and critical reflection; and a drill-and-test library for developing fluency with the course content.
We have statistical evidence to show that active use of these tools strongly correlates with learning. Further, as a side-effect of channelling all interaction through a central database, a detailed record of student interaction is collected. This record allows instructors to monitor overall class performance and to assess individual students over time in modes that limit opportunities for plagiarism. With routine use, a rich picture of student performance is collected.
We are currently at the point of building additional tools to further exploit the interaction data. These include reputation systems, whereby the quality of an individual’s comments and feedback is judged by the recipients, and recommender systems, in which participants are able to highlight instances of high quality work. Both of these ideas are present in popular online auction and shopping sites, but have not been widely adapted for educational use.
The paper will describe the Aropä and PeerWise tools, discuss the education theory behind the ideas, present results from the ongoing research study into student learning and attitudes toward the tools, and elaborate some of our ideas for future development.
Presentation Slides and Podcast
