peerwise nottingham seminar

Physics Education ResearchThe University of Edinburgh

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Using PeerWise to support a community of learning

Ross Galloway, Simon Bates, Karon McBride


• 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


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• To date– 77 institutions

– 557 courses

– 33757 students have contributed

– 94207 questions have been written

– 2308854 answers have been submitted


What we did in our course

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PeerWise was introduced in workshop sessions in Week 5

Students worked throughstructured example task and devised own Qs in groups.

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An assessment was set for the end of Week 6:

Minimum requirements:

• Write 1 question• Answer 5• Comment on & rate 3

Contributed ~3% to course assessment

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We were deliberatelyhands off.

• No moderation• No corrections• No interventions at all

But we did observe…..

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Assessment mark based on performance as determined by PeerWise score.


What we foundengagement, 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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Workshoptraining

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

• Highest quality questions were EXCEPTIONALLY good

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The questions will be poor quality… rote learning, factual recall blah blah blah…..


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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

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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….


CA1 CA3 CA5


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[email protected]/EdPER

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!


Marking system:

PeerWise score

assignment mark

highest score

highest score

lowest score

minimum task requirement

40%

70%

100%