learning beyond the horizon: using peerwise to increase engagement for students in transition
TRANSCRIPT
Learning Beyond the Horizon: Using Peerwise to increase engagement for students in transition
Eamon Costello Mark Brown
James Brunton Lorraine Delaney
National Institute for Digital Learning – Dublin City University
BackstoryBackstory
Backstory
Backstory
Learning online
Challenges of Teaching Programing
• Diverse student body• Some new to programing• Online/Flexible learning
Some Key Principles in Learning Programing
Feedback
Reflection
Practice
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. Chicago
The Question
• How can we increase engagement?(and create a virtuous practice circle that includes reflection and feedback)
Feedback
Reflection
Practice
Principles of the Approach Taken“[The] biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers”.(Hattie 2013, p. 22) • Test enhanced learning (Roediger & Karpickle, 2006): testing itself promotes recall and memorisation of knowledge providing testing includes feedback and is periodic
Hattie, J (2013) Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. RoutledgeRoediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological science, 17(3), 249-255.Chicago
Student Task
• Create Multiple Choice Questions on PHP Web programming topics according to question creation criteria
• Answer questions• Provide feedback• Rate your peers
• Required: number of questions to– create,– answer, – and comment-on/rate
How to ask
• Purchase, H., Hamer, J., Denny, P. and Luxton-Reilly, A. (2010) The quality of a PeerWise MCQ repository. IN: Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Conference on Computing Education-Volume 103. Australian Computer Society, Inc.
• Tarrant, M., Knierim, A., Hayes, S. K. and Ware, J. (2006) The frequency of item writing flaws in multiple-choice questions used in high stakes nursing assessments. Nurse Educ.Today. vol. 26, no. 8, pp 662-671.
Many educators are not good question authors (Tarrant et. al., 2006)But well guided students may be (Purchase et. al., 2010)
Student-friendly guide to best practice in authoring MCQ questions:– The question is clearly stated; – The question is error free; – The distractors (incorrect answers) are feasible; – The accompanying explanation is good; – the specified answer is correct.
Peerwise
• Peer assessment• Peerwise - online social learning environment
designed for peer assessment
Results
Requirement: Create 5 questions• 56% of the 27 students created more than 5 questions.
Engagement
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 270
5
10
Questions Created per Student
Required
Requirement: Answer 7 questions• 85% of the 27 students created more than 5 questions.
Engagement
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 270
50
100
7
Questions Answered per Student
Required
Engagement
Denny, P. (2013). The effect of virtual achievements on student engagement. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 763-772). ACM.Chicago
Large-scale (n > 1000) randomized, controlled experiment (Denny, 2013) found a significant positive effect:• on the quantity of student
contributions• the period of time over which
students engaged
Student Feedback
Student Feedback
“Peerwise depends on the knowledge of the person asking the questions. As a secondary teacher a lot of the people asking questions didn't balance the style of the question with the type of information required. People made questions unclear by trying to make them too hard. Also what could be done is if the people have two write questions in the future. Do so as they have to write 2 easy, 2 harder and one in depth question. This will allow them to develop their skills. It was an interesting experience and a nice break from coding. ”
Crowd-Sourced Assessment
Lessons Learned
• Peerwise very easy to use for students and well received
• Promotes engagement• Requires time thought to implement• Tip: Start simply and iterate
Questions?
More about Peerwise: http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/