Design and Evaluation of an IT-based Peer Assessment to Increase Learner Performance in Large-Scale Lectures

In this study, we propose an IT-based peer assessment (ITPA) for enhancing interaction and feedback in universities’ large-scale lectures. These lectures often lack interaction and feedback, and focus on mainly imparting factual knowledge. Hence, these formats often cannot go beyond the basic cognitive levels of educational objectives. Using the ITPA within the learning process helps integrating assignments focusing on high cognitive levels to comprehensively acquire the learning content. We follow a design science research approach to develop and evaluate the ITPA. Thus, we first identify requirements from theory and derive a set of design elements afterwards. A pre-test shows that the ITPA is seen as useful and learners intend to use it. The subsequent quasi-experiment in a large-scale lecture shows that learners who participated in the ITPA performed better in the part of the final exam trained by the ITPA, whereas they did not perform better in the others parts

Web-based peer assessment system with an anonymous communication tool

Peer assessment is a technique that has been successfully employed in a variety of academic disciplines, and it is considered as effective in developing students' higher cognitive skills. This paper describes the potential for web-based peer assessment with an anonymous communication tool, and reports the results of applying a novel web-based technology to the delivery of peer assessment in the context of an undergraduate computer programming course

An investigation into novel software tools for enhancing students' higher cognitive skills in computer programming

Active learning is considered by many academics as an important and effective learning strategy. Students can improve the quality of their work by developing their higher cognitive skills through reflection on their own ideas, and through practice of analytic and evaluative skills. Assessment is a tool for learning, but traditional assessment methods often encourage surface learning, rather than deep learning which is an approach to developing higher cognitive skills. Peer assessment is one of the successful approaches, which can be used to enhance deep learning. It is a method of motivating students, involving students discussing, marking and providing feedback on other students' work. Although it is often used in the context of essays, it has seldom been applied to computer programming courses. The skill of writing good software includes understanding different approaches to the task, and stylistic and related considerations - these can be developed by evaluation of other programmers' solutions. As part of a study investigating the extent that peer assessment can promote deep learning to develop the higher cognitive skills in a programming course, a novel web-based peer assessment tool has been developed. - The process used is novel, since students are engaged not only in marking each other's work, but also in evaluating the quality of marking of their peers. - This system is designed to provide anonymity for the whole process, in order to ensure that the process is fair, and to encourage students to discuss without embarrassment by using an anonymous communication device (ACD) in a variety of roles (script authors, marker, and feedback marker). In this thesis, we describe and compare the learning theory and tools, which are relevant in learning computer programming. Deep learning, which can be described using the six categories of learning in Bloom's taxonomy, is discussed. Other peer assessment software tools are compared and discussed. The design and implementation of a novel web-based peer assessment system (with anonymous communication device) are described, and set in the context of the learning theories. The results of evaluating the tools through several experiments involving large programming classes and an essay writing module are reported. In this thesis, we also propose a new variation of Bloom's taxonomy, which is appropriate to describe the skills required for tasks such as programming. The results indicate that this approach to web-based peer assessment has successfully helped students to develop their higher cognitive skills in learning computer programming, and peer assessment is an accurate assessment method in a programming course.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo