Familiarity breeds content peer wise

Physics Education ResearchThe University of Edinburgh

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Familiarity Breeds Content:

Student generated content for

enhanced engagement and learning

Simon Bates, Judy Hardy, Ross Galloway and Karon McBride

http://bit.ly/SGC4L


The University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, Scotland

5th July, 2010

Paul Denny

PeerWisebridging the gap between online learning

and social media

Department of Computer Science

The University of Auckland

New Zealand http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/


Intro and overview of PeerWise

(Elluminate room)

Hands-on!

http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/

Results of pilot implementation at Edinburgh

2010 and 2011 and Q&A

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overview

4


Student

familiarity with

Web 2.0

The energy and

creativity of a

large class

Student

requests for

more problems


• Web-based MCQ repository built by

students

• Students:

– develop new questions with

associated explanations

– answer existing questions and

rate them for quality and difficulty

– take part in discussions

– can follow other authors


• 2007-Summer 2010

– 45 institutions

– 260 courses

– 20661 students have contributed

– 57324 questions have been written

– 1527574 answers have been submitted


• To date

– 140 institutions

– 879 courses

– 47719 students have contributed

– 164503 questions have been written

– 3879994 answers have been submitted


What we did in our course(s)

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2010 - PeerWise was introduced in

workshop sessions in S1 Week 5

Students worked through

structured introductory activities

Grunge Prowkers test available from www.uwe.ac.uk/elearning/examples/mcq.pdf

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PeerWise was introduced in workshop

sessions in Week 5

Students worked through

structured example task

and devised own Qs

in groups.

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In S1, an assessment was set for the end

of Week 6:

Minimum requirements:

• Write one question

• Answer 5

• Comment on & rate 3

Contributed ~3% to course assessment13


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We were deliberately

hands off.

• No moderation

• No corrections

• No interventions at all

But we did observe…..

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Your turn!

http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/

• Click on ‘Get started’ top right

• Course code 5808

• Pick a username (user001-user100)

• Create some general knowledge Qs

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What we found

engagement, examples, effects

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It’s just a

gimmick…..


Uptake for in-

course assessment

(class size of

~200)

350 questions

in total

~3500 answers

~2000 comments

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Workshop

training

Live Due


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They’ll put in

nonsense &

irrelevant

questions….


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Quality of submissions:

• Average quality was very good

• Few trivial questions / nonsense distracters

• ‘Community moderation’ discouraged sub-par questions

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The questions will

be poor quality… rote learning, factual recall

blah blah blah…..


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26

The science

will be all

wrong……


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Perceptions

We sought student feedback both in

‘wash-up’ sessions after the

assessment and in the end of course

questionnaire

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Positives

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Positives

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Negatives

31


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… but they’ll

lose interest

after a while….


Mid-semester

deadline


End-of-semester

deadline


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… but you can’t

prove that

greater use

correlates with

performance….


Low PeerWise

Activity

High PeerWise

Activity


Matched Pairs: Scottish, male, non-majors

1 2 3 4 5 6

PW

activityX MPA X MPA LPA LPA

No

auth

PW

markX 23 X 23 14 14

CW 70 71 48 50 62 67

Exam 56 69 49 54 40 34

Grade B A D C D Fail


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Take-homes:

• Provide orientation task

• Set the quality bar very high

• Force yourself to be hands-off

• Set an assessment task

• Leave the deadline as late as you can

• Assessment is quality-based but light-load (no

direct marking required)

• Unleash the creativity of your students!


Now under way:

JISC Assessment and Feedback research project:

Student Generated Content for Learning

(SGC4L)

http://bit.ly/SGC4L


http://bit.ly/EdPER

Acknowledgements:We gratefully acknowledge funding from

• JISC

• Higher Education Academy UK Physical

Sciences Centre.

[email protected]

Familiarity breeds content peer wise

Education

s1 week

workshop sessions

end of week

new questions

course assessmentclass

learningsimon bates

judy hardy

online learning