Peace Education - Brisbane

hi,
This years peace education course used online spaces to support working in groups and it featured self and peer assessment.
We used co-operative group work in order to achieve some of the goals that we were able to achieve in tutorials in the past because we only had 1 hour tuts this year - not good.

Groups were formed (sort of) in week 2.
Group agreements (listen, respect etc ) were made the next week.
The first peer and self assessment was only formative and that was in week 5 and 6.
That was a long face to face (f2f) process that I think helped a group to see each other in a positive light, and it gave an opportunity to open out sources of or feelings of conflict, so they could be dialogued.

After their seminar presentation, each member of the presenting small group individually submitted a summative peer and self assessment. This was a private activity and no-one in any group was required to see what others wrote or how they scored each other.

Theres a few things we did this year that I would change. This is where I need your help.

If you are interested, and would like to give me some help/ advice/ the benefit of your experience, the following is some of what I've been thinking.

I synthesised many different formats to get to that which this year's students used, and having tested it out, the following needs to be done differently for the summative form of assessment to be both fair and effective.

eg
1. the numbering/scoring I used in peer assessment may have seemed confusing to students but it did seem to be fair. Well it was a pain to administer. It needs a complete restructure so that the numbers say clearly what they are supposed to say and do not need a mathematician (or my son) to pull them together.

2. there was no connection between peer and self assessment - they did not affect each other at all. One possible effect of this is that the whole group does badly in the seminar presentation when one person in the team does a crap job, and when I am marking the seminar presentation I am giving only a group mark - on the whole thing, including group co-operation where students are supposed to be making each other look good.

3. the self assessment was a mess - people didnt understand the cross, tick and M system.
Also, it became an opportunity for people to give themselves a quick score of 5 out of 5. It did not encourage the values of peace eg honesty, humility, acceptance of difference, opportunity to build a path for improved practice. It did not demonstrate any learning, nor the value of self-reflection and the reality that we all have growing edges. And it fits into a competitive structure (uni) so the strongest power in this system is the need for a great or an improved GPA.

What do I want S&P ass to do ?

I would like students to see the benefits of self and peer assessment as going beyond the competitive scoring structures of any uni.

for no. 3. I have to give people the chance to rate themselves, to show where they believe their strengths and growing edges lay. Students need to see that we each have flaws - after all, it is that which makes us look beautiful to others at times. The next step is that people need to show that they can regulate the behaviours they or others do not appreciate.

for no. 2, this was the only scoring system ( in the assessment of group work and seminar presentation) that indicated if each student had done the "behind scenes" work, required in group work, or not. In reality, people scored themselves very highly even when their peers scored them badly. People who did not pull their weight could get a score of 2 or 3 from their peers, and yet still get 5 for self assessment - giving them 7 or 8 out of 10. 7 or 8 out of 10 does not seem fair when they have done no work to prepare, especially when those who do really well get much the same because they have the humility to see that they too need to improve.
eg people who demonstrated humility scored themselves lower than full marks because they have the insight to see how they will continue to grow. This indicates higher order thinking and maturity. Surely that deserves recognition at the structural level?
Instead, there was no difference in the score of the insightful students and students who did not pull their weight, despite enormous difference in capability, effort, understanding, growth.
An alternative form of this problem is when students want to do it all, not sharing, or perhaps work really poorly in groups (eg hostile, domineering, dont listen etc). Surely there should be an effective indication of this in the scoring if we are going to do summative self and peer assessment.

What I think is that peer assessment should probably affect self assessment.

or

Perhaps this should be a pass/fail system.

or

Scoring for the assignment result will need to be about completion of each section of the process rather than on personal performance. That means people do not score themselves or their group members directly. (That is not optimum - but I am not seeing a way round it at present.. Do you have any ideas?) I suppose it also means that rather then being scored for what may be personality issues, students will get scored for jumping thru all the presentation and evaluation hoops.

4. peer assessment may have given people the opportunity for revenge in the scoring and to vent in the comments box, but it was not effective for group work - either in scoring or venting.

For no 4, here are some ideas (this is probably just for me to record - but if you have any feedback or further ideas or experiences,I would be ever so grateful)

- if there's someone in your group who is not good at sharing the tasks because they only have confidence in their own ability to do it all, this needs to be addressed. (plus other personality/experience/inclination variations on that theme.) I need to introduce a middle layer of peer and self eval that gives controllers (or other variations) a chance and encouragement to let that control (or or other counter-productive behaviour ) go, so they allow others to contribute,

- individuals need to propose a detailed plan of how they see each persons role during the seminar presentation and submit that to me as a proposal - the timeline of tasks and milestones for review. This detailed plan is assessable.

- groups need to be able to check off the processes being used in their small group work with a list of best practices. A series of questions could enhance that.

- groups need to use a critical questioning process before the plan is submitted to be certain that each group member's view of the seminar has been considered.

- groups need to be able to break up into smaller units to test the strength of proposed plans and to discuss differences in opinion,

- if theres someone in your group who is not pulling their weight, then the scoring doesnt allow them to make up for their lack of effort thru the group assignment. There needs to be the chance to undo any lack of commitment or personal circumstance problems, within the semester.

One suggestion for this is that there become 3 layers of self and peer assessment - the third layer is where they get a chance to show how they've lifted their game.

This is about building success. If peer and self assessment are to be useful, they are not to be used as an opportunity to manipulate, degrade, undermine people but to build growth opportunities, to enhance inclusion and belongingness, and to allow people the chance to feel good about themselves.

what do you think?
hh

Posted by heather on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 3:22 PM | Permalink