Dr Anne Jones
Centre for Educational Development
Dr Bjoern Elsaesser
School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering

• Introduction to peer review
• Case example from MEng Civil Engineering
Level 4 module
• Some software to support peer review

• Peer assessment – where students award marks and may also give feedback
• Peer review – students provide feedback to each other – develops students’ ability to construct feedback
• Peer learning

• Add to the amount and variety of feedback students already receive without adding to staff workload
• Address timeliness while it matters and with the opportunity to act on it
• Provide feedback in a language understood by the students
• Provide multiple sources of feedback – more realistic of the real world – develops ability to reconcile different viewpoints
• Engage students in constructing feedback

• Active learners – high level activity that is cognitively demanding
• Active engagement with criteria and standards
• Often there is an element of reciprocity – feedback provided on the same piece of work
• Disciplinary expertise – writing feedback commentaries deepens understanding
• Learning communities
• Self-assessment skills and professional life

• Students do not have the knowledge or skill to comment on another’s work
• Too critical and harsh in their comments
• Compromise academic integrity
• Too time consuming

• ‘This is your job’
• ‘We don’t know how to do this’
• ‘I wouldn’t trust the comments of another student’
• ‘What if I get a weaker student or someone I don’t trust reviewing my work?’

• Use exemplars to introduce students to the process
• Ask students to suggest something which could be improved upon or is not included which could be relevant
• Ask students to review more than one piece of work so that the author of the work has comments to compare – and self-assess

• Tutor provides assessment on the quality of the feedback – ensures students engage

• Poor quality lab reports
• Students worked in groups to produce their lab report as a poster
• Students asked to write comments on all the posters
• → increased learning gains in lab reporting and exams
• Encouraged time and effort on challenging tasks
• Opportunity to use the feedback
• Creates learning communities

• Peer review and feedback on essay in English with 80 students
• Used electronic software Aropä which manages the anonymous distribution – cf
PeerMark
• Assessment rubric provided by staff
• Marks for participation NOT quality
• Set up so that student did not review their own topic

• Students asked to provide a response to the following:
– What issue is the essay addressing?
– What is the main argument? Or suggest an argument
– What support does the author offer for the argument? Suggest a counter-argument
– Identify a characteristic sentence in the draft and suggest how it might be improved

• Student views:
– Positive
– Doing the review and using the assessment criteria gave them an insight into how their work was assessed
– Providing feedback would help them become more able to self-assess
– Identified ‘blind spots’ in their own writing and learned from the writing styles of others

USING PEER REVIEW IN HYDRAULICS 4
CIV4026
DR BJOERN ELSAESSER
SCHOOL OF PLANNING, ARCHITECTURE &
CIVIL ENGINEERING

• Introduction to the topic
• Overview of module
• Issues with students’ learning
• Student peer review process
• Example reviews
• The lecturer’s experience
• Pros & cons
• Wider issues with module
• Conclusion

½ module in 2 nd semester of level 4
35 -20 students
-> introduce students to the principles and practice of advanced fluid mechanics in engineering
-> emphasis on environmental problems and renewable energy systems
12 weeks split into two parts:
– ~5 weeks for research of topic and report / lecture
2 weeks peer assessment of above
– 5 weeks applied analysis to engineering problem
Reporting and presentation

Topics taught:
Hydropower & Tidal power
• Turbo machinery in hydropower, types, typical features, characteristics, key design specifications
• Free stream rotors, types, blade element momentum theory,
• Design of spillways and overflow structures,
• Aspects of hydrodynamic forces on structures in rivers, coasts and offshore
Transient & two phase flow problems
• Transient pipe flows / Surge chambers and overflows,
• Sediment transport processes,
Hydrodynamics theory
• Navier Stokes equation & its application

• Reports had been very superficial
• Very little evidence based description of topics
• Limited number of equations and factual design guidance
• Limited evidence of acquired transferable knowledge
• Heavily criticised by colleagues as “easy” subject (reflected by student numbers)

Peer review Project / Analysis Presentation Group report / lecture note
Groups of 2-4 students
One topic
Individual Group as previous Group
45%
All other topics
10%
Topic different to previous
35%
On project / analysis
10%
Ongoing consultation with lecturer
Lecturer edited peer feedback
Ongoing consultation with lecturer
Verbal feedback

• Students informed at introduction about the peer review process
• Review does not replace tutor’s marking, review forms part of indiv. assessment
• Students are given marking sheet and criteria
Total marks set out for each criteria
• At review stage process is explained again
• Students are asked to review as individual (not in groups)

• Has worked well and not increased workload
• Can provide strong evidence for “freeloaders”
• Vehicle to providing feedback to students
• Review provide an excellent assessment matrix
• Widened the gap between good and less adept students?

Name
Student A
Student B
Student C
Student D
Student E
Total number of words in the assessment
~ 2700 words
~ 2300 words
~ 600 words
~ 600 words
~ 450 words
Difference between top and lowest score
14.5 marks
14 marks
9.5 marks
5 marks
7 marks

Pros
• Widens knowledge from one topic to several
• Individual mark for individual students
• Good students clearly identify deficits and apply to their own work
• Quick feedback
Cons
• Low grade students left behind?
– Own assessment
– Ability to judge good work from poor
– Skim only surface of topic
• Assessment of peer review is summative, no chance to improve

• Varying student number
• Varying quality of reports produced
• Staff effort
• Evidence of enhanced knowledge & understanding
• Widening gap between different grades of students

• PeerMark
• PeerWise

• Part of the Turnitin suite
• Students upload work
• System can be set up to distribute the papers randomly and anonymously if required
• Includes option for self-review
• Can include a rating if peer assessment is wanted
• Tutor can see all reviews
• Ability to make all reviews available to the group following the exercise

• University of Auckland http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/
• Free – open source
• Staff set up the class
• Students asked to register and select nom de plume -
• Students write MCQs with appropriate feedback
• Students answer and review the questions of their peers
• High level cognitive activity

• Hamer, J., Kell, C. and Spence, F. (2007) Peer assessment suing Aropä, Australian Computing
Society, available at: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~j-hamer/peerassessment-using-Aropa.pdf
• Nicol, D (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback in mass higher
Education Assessment and Evaluation in Higher
Education, 35:5, 501-517
• TESTA project http://www.testa.ac.uk/resources/videos