Welcome!
In this section of the AEC e-Newsletter you'll find news, features and tips brought to you by XJTLU's Educational Technologies Team.
This first edition details the recently-held symposium concerning XJTLU's potential development and use of MOOCs, and also has a particular focus on assessment. This includes taking a closer look at WebPA - a tool to support peer assessment; how Active Response is being used within Department of Urban Planning and Design programmes to foster greater in-class interaction, as well as a reminder of some of the other tools available that can support and facilitate assessment-led activities.
Contact us:
As always, the Educational Technologies Team would be very happy to hear from you, and if you have any feedback, comments or suggestions concerning this page (or any other educational technology-related topic), please don't hesitate to get in touch with any member of the team via:
Roland Sherwood - Educational Technologist: roland.sherwood@xjtlu.edu.cn
Na Li - Educational Technologist: na.li@xjtlu.edu.cn
Yezi Yang - E-learning Officer: yezi.yang@xjtlu.edu.cn
MOOCs Symposium
Among many recent developments in the field of education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have certainly generated a great deal of discussion and debate.
With this in mind, Wednesday, November 18th, saw XJTLU hosting a symposium event intended to foster discussion and consideration of issues relating to the potential development and use of MOOCs by the University. The event - attended by representatives from a wide range of departments/centres and members of XJTLU's Senior Management Team - provided the setting for lively and thoughtful debate on a variety of topics.
Further discussion concerning the role of MOOCs at XJTLU will likely occur in future. In the meantime, however, we wish to thank all attendees for their contribution to this event, and hope the attached minutes and slideshow files prove useful for any colleagues unable to attend.
Technology Spotlight
This focus of this month's Technology Spotlight is WebPA.
What is it?
Developed by Loughborough University, UK, WebPA is an online peer assessment system, or more specifically, a peer-moderated marking system. It is designed to be used by teams of students doing group-work, the outcome of which earns an overall group mark. Each student in a group grades their team-mates (and, optionally, their own) performance. This grading is then combined with the overall group mark to provide each student with an individual grade. The individual grade reflects the students contribution to the group work as a whole.
How does it work?
Completion of a WebPA assessment involves several steps:
- You create an assessment form containing criteria that your students will use to mark their team mates. Once created, a form can be re-used again and again.
- You create the groups you need, and assign students to them. If you want to assess your groups more than once, you can re-use the same groups.
- You create an assessment and schedule when it will run.
- The students peer-assess each other.
- From those scores, each student gets a weighting – e.g. 1.1
- That weighting is multiplied by the group-mark to give the student's actual mark e.g. 1.1 x 80%= 88%
- You can also set how much of the group-mark is peer assessed. For example, you may want the peer-assessment to only apply to 50% of the group-mark, e.g. (1.1 x (50% of 80%)) + (50% of 80%) = 84%
How do I get started?
Please contact a member of the Educational Technologies Team for further information.
MOOCs Symposium Files
-
Download MOOCs Symposium notes.pdf
MOOCs Symposium notes.pdf Details
- Friday, 11 December 2015 [84.7KB] -
Download MOOCs Symposium Presentation.pdf
MOOCs Symposium Presentation.pdf Details
- Friday, 11 December 2015 [3.8MB]
Practitioner Showcase
Alainna Thomas: Using ICE's Active Response activity to encourage in-class student interaction in Urban and Environmental Economics.
Origin:
Urban Planning & Design, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Contact:
Alainna Thomas, UPD, Alainna.Thomas@xjtlu.edu.cn
Na Li, AEC, na.li@xjltu.edu.cn
Yezi Yang, AEC, yezi.yang@xjtlu.edu.cn
Objectives:
To engage students more deeply so that they can gain a stronger understanding of the concepts
Background:
Dr. Alainna Thomas teaches Urban and Environmental Economics to a class of 80 Year 2 students. She introduced Active Response quizzes to engage her students and improve in-class interactions.
What was done / Why use Active Response?
"Students are very nervous about speaking English or asking questions. So instead of raising their hands, I can easily see their responses and [quickly see] what they understand or don’t understand by using the Active Response quiz. I don’t use the time limit so that we can spend time going over the question.
In addition, students are so used to acquiring knowledge through passive learning, such as reading and memorizing. What I am really trying get them to do is more active learning, by having the take regular quizzes and getting them to think and to see what they still do not understand or what they finally do understand. I vary the questions so some are short answer or multiple choice." -- Dr. Thomas
What worked well / Benefits for teaching?
"The active response quiz really helps me to understand what the students do not get during the class. And the students are more engaged when we have this kind of activity. They also learn from each other. They see how their classmates write their answers. I am not providing ‘the answer”." -- Dr. Thomas
Easy to use?
"One of the benefits is that the questions are stored in the question bank. I can reuse them or do some small changes for the next time. In the long-term, it saves a lot of time. You do have to spend some time at first. " -- Dr. Thomas
Problems and/or issue?
“Sometimes there are issues like Internet Explore not having flash in the lecture hall computer. So I need to double check before the class and have a backup plan. I teach in two different lecture halls so the technology problems are different." -- Dr. Thomas
Student feedback:
- "It is really helpful. Everyone can participate in the lesson."
- "The quizzes make the concepts more clear."
- "All of the students’ answers can be shown on the screen, which helps broaden my perspective and understanding."
- "It’s an efficient way to review what we’ve learned."
Conclusion:
"I definitely recommend this activity to colleagues, particularly for large classes. It is a great way to get responses and understand whether students are getting it or not. I also use it as a way to exchange ideas in a safe way in the class. I always make sure to anonymize the students’ answers." -- Dr. Thomas
Tool Used
- ICE (Moodle)
- Active Response Activity
Ideas for Practices
In addition to WebPA (detailed above), ICE also offers a range of other tools that support assessment in a variety of forms.
Whether you're interested in students' submitting work online, conducting in-class or out-of-class quizzes, group work, etc. below is a summary of some of the tools available to academic staff to support assessment practices. Note that if you're not sure which tool is right for the task you have in mind, feel free to contact any member of the Educational Technologies Team to arrange a one-to-one consultation.
Academic integrity and plagiarism
The assignment activity enables a teacher to communicate tasks, collect work and provide grades and feedback. Students can submit work individually or as groups/teams. It also allows audio/video submissions. When reviewing assignments, teachers can leave feedback comments and upload feedback files. The Turnitin assignment can also help to check for plagiarism, while the Mahara assignment allows for the submission of web page based coursework.
Peer Assessment
WebPA is an external online automated tool that facilitates group work assessments. Instead of review to the submissions of other group members, WebPA provides a chance to review the behavior of group members. It provides a contribution rate for each group member according to the result of peer judgements.
Peer Review
The workshop activity enables the collection, review and peer assessment of students' work. Submissions are assessed using a multi-criteria assessment form defined by the teacher. Students are given the opportunity to assess one or more of their peers' submissions. Submissions and reviewers may be anonymous if required.
Quiz
The quiz activity enables a teacher to create quizzes comprising questions of various types, including multiple choice, matching, short-answer and numerical. Quizzes may be used: as module exams; as mini tests for reading assignments or at the end of a topic; as exam practice using questions from past exams; to deliver immediate feedback about performance; for self-assessment
Active Response Quiz
Active Response allows instructors to deliver in-class quizzes. Teachers can also share the students' collective responses live and in in real-time via a projected display, with the respondent's remaining anonymous if necessary. Ideal for reviewing your students' understanding of a lecture/class, or for checking their existing understanding of a new topic.
Forum
The Discussion Forum activity allows teachers to provide feedback or comments on students' contributions in a group discussion or one-on-one help. It is a good place for topic discussions, news announcements and resources sharing.