Phase 2: Mid Project Review

Progress of experiment so far.

1. Instructor created a normal TurnitinUK assignment.
2. Instructor created a peer review assignment and assigns a peer review distribution, as well as creating topic and metric questions for students to use e.g: Unit 29: P3: Task 4 (a) and (b)
3. Student papers were submitted to a regular TurnitinUK assignment.
4. On the peer review start date: 6th December 2009, the papers assigned to each student show up in their class portfolio for the students to begin writing peer reviews.
5. For each assigned paper the student writes a review by responding to the topic and metric questions selected by the instructor.
6. Once the due date: 8th December 2009 of the peer review passes no more reviews can be written, completed, or edited by writer.
7. On the post date: 15th December 2009 of the peer review , reviews written by classmates on the paper a student submitted become available for that student to view.

Click here for: Overview of aformentioned process by screen capture

Outcomes and benefits so far?
The principal outcome thus far has ben that at least one cohort of student have been able to experience how a Peer Review is conducted.

The benefits has been to develop the editing skills of this cohort: .by looking critically at their peers’writing, students also learnt to look at their own papers critically while acquiring these important editing skills. The topic and metric questions that instructors had chosen for peer review assignments help students focus their feedback and offer more substantive comments.

Other features and benefits observed:

• Saved classroom time
• Allowed anonymous reviews where required
• Increases student awareness of their audience

What is still required to achieve the outcomes?
The principal requirement to achieve the outcomes of the project is to spread the practice of Online Peer Reviews assignment across all the 18 units covered in the two year BTEC: National Diploma in Business. However, this will start to be achieved through the follow-up assignment Peer Reveiwed being conducted on Friday 5th February 2010: Unit 37: Starting a small business. Section 3: Skills required to run and develop your business i.e. Unit 37: Task 4: P3.

Note: This review will utilse the PeerMark feature of Turn-It-In (UK), which is much more user friendly

In summary, the main problem area, so far, has been the quality and the students responses and reviews missed-out by absence students. Notwithstanding, the quantitative and qualitative data indicator that Peer Reviews are an effective tool develop the analytical and evaluation skills of the students, which is the core objective of their course.