Peer feedback for active student involvement

This article will show an example of peer feedback for active student involvement.

Paired Groups divide work for assignments

Course: YRM20306 Research Methodology in Environmental Science

Period: Period 1 and 2

Short Introduction and background

Introduction and story behind the emergence of this learning activity. What was the need, what issue/problem was the teacher facing and wanted to resolve? 

One of the main learning activities in this course is a group assignment where students have to come up with a conceptual framework for a research project. Although each group works on a case of their own choice, all assignments are structurally identical and build up through multiple stages.  

Figure 1: Peer feedback structure scheme

Figure 1: Peer feedback scheme for active student involvement.

Relevant tools / apps (software) or hardware used

Learning outcome(s)

What has been learned after this lesson/activity has been executed ?

The group assignment links to several learning outcomes of the course, but most importantly to: 

After successful completion of this course, students are expected to be able to contribute to interdisciplinary research designs for the environmental sciences 

A more implicit objective was to make students value each other as sources of knowledge and not just defer to authority. 

Lesson idea / Learning activity

Specific description and demonstration of the lesson idea/learning activity.

Lessons learned / Tips

Mentions tips lecturer has for colleagues based on their experience.

What we will improve

  • We learned through trial and error that the evaluation of received feedback should be kept rather simple. Because students are still in the learning process, they don’t always see whether the feedback they received was complete, etc. At the meta-level a teachers’ perspective is still valuable. For this reason, we will also maintain the instructor feedback moment on the first part of the group assignment. 
  • The closely structured individual peer feedback cycles eliminated opportunities for students to avoid work. Now we worry that closing these loopholes has increased the workload too much. . Now that we understand better what it takes to do what we expect, we are thinking about eliminating the feedback round, letting go of the textbook and/or pre-selecting the cases for the group assignment. Students currently spend a lot of time finding data, etc. for their specific case, which is not a learning objective of this course.  

What we will keep

  • We are definitely planning to keep the flipped approach after Covid-19. Having students study and prepare online and using the in-class time for high-quality discussions turns out to be a substantial improvement. High expectations, combined with a highly structured learning environment, high instructor involvement, and smart use of incentives, really seem to work. 
  • We hired a Teaching Assistant to keep an eye on the group process and identify group dysfunction at an early stage. She was present at the Friday meetings and looked at Progress in Brightspace and the channel activities in MS teams to monitor participation. In addition to being very useful in more typical TA functions, their presence saved at least three groups from serious problems. 
  • Stable pairings of groups whose members got to know each other encouraged individuals to do the work, take it seriously and submit on time. 
  • Randomly grading one of the four student reviews kept the workload manageable for the instructors and provided an effective incentive for students. 

What to watch out for

  • The grades students gave for the reviews did not correlate that well with the grades we gave those same reviews. This did not trouble us as the act of grading the review had other purposes: assessment (from Bloom’s taxonomy) and salience (if it is graded, Pavlovian conditioning means students pay attention) 
  • It was very difficult to maintain anonymity since, for example, Teams by default makes visible who submits a file (so remember to turn that off!). 
  • No system we could find supports individual review and assessment of the work done by a paired group. Managing this was labour intensive and prone to errors. 
  • Unless compelled to do otherwise, students will use the list of guiding questions as a questionnaire and simply state ‘yes’ and ‘no’ where the items are supposed to prompt deliberation informed by course material. 

Contacts

Teacher(s): Peter Tamas , Viktor Emonds
TLC contact (on MS Teams):
Jolanda Soeting
Author (interviewer): Sanne Mirck 

Attachments

  • Thought sharing with Peter and Viktor about peer feedback for active student involvement : (video below)

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