A number of instructors at McGill have implemented peer assessment (PA) in their courses and have generously shared some of their reflections on the topic.
Professor Marta Cerruti teaches Materials Surfaces: A Biomimetic Approach (MIME 515/CHEE 515) to undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Engineering. In a conversation about her experience with PA, she shares how she implemented PA in her course both within and among student teams, reflects on students’ PA experience, and gives advice for instructors thinking about trying PA in their courses.
If you teach at McGill and give students multiple choice question (MCQ) final exams, you’ll be receiving a “Test Item Statistics Report” from the Exam Office sometime after the end of term. This report, also known as an “item analysis report,” is sent to you along with the exam results. The report lets you know all kinds of interesting things about your exam, such as:
Photo credit: “Exam” by Alberto G. is licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic(CC BY 2.0)
In this post in our new series “Hacking myCourses,” we look at a simple way to print out Quizzes created in myCourses. Just a quick reminder: we’re not actually hacking myCourses; we mean “hacking” the tools in myCourses to make them do something that isn’t obvious to do. Continue reading Hacking myCourses: Printing quizzes→
Welcome to our first post in our new series “Hacking myCourses”. We don’t actually mean “hacking” myCourses (as not to raise eyebrows at IT Security)… but rather, how can you “hack” the tools in myCourses to make them do something that isn’t intuitively obvious to do?
Scenario:
You may be in a situation where you want to grade open-ended questions automatically for completion rather than for correctness. Here is a trick you can use to auto-grade open-ended questions such that anything a student enters in the answer box receives full points. Continue reading Hacking myCourses: Auto-grading open-ended quiz questions→
I interviewed Diane to learn what the course addresses and how she designed it. The first thing I learned is that communicating science is a growing interest for many scientists.
Diane explained: There’s a movement, both online and off, toward increasing science communication. It’s a push for academics to become better at talking about their research to non-specialists, and for scientists, in particular, to assert their knowledge, control their message, and communicate with the public more broadly. Continue reading Helping Students Communicate Science – Beyond the Classroom!→
A number of instructors at McGill have been integrating peer assessment (PA) in their courses and have generously shared some of their reflections on the experience.
Lawrence Chen teaches Introduction to the Engineering Profession (FACC 100), a required course for all first-year students in the Faculty of Engineering. During a conversation about his experience with PA, he shared how he implemented PA in this course of approximately 400 students (across two course sections), and shared feedback from his students about their experience. Continue reading Peer Assessment: goals, technology and student perspectives in a large, first-year course→
A number of instructors at McGill have integrated peer assessment (PA) in their courses and have generously shared some of their reflections on the experience.
Carolyn Samuel taught the course Academic English II (CESL 300) for several years through the McGill Writing Centre. In a conversation about her experience implementing PA, she described an assignment, explained how students learn to assess their peers, and offered advice for instructors considering implementing PA in their classes. Continue reading Preparing students to provide constructive feedback on peers’ work→
