Self Assessment & Peer Assessment
“[The course] is student focused, but instructor supported, so the assessments should be that way too” – AnneMarie Dorland
Background
Dr. AnneMarie Dorland teaches UNIV 203, the second Global Challenges course offered through the University of Calgary’s College of Discovery, Creativity and Innovation. These newly developed courses are “learning labs” for students and instructors, where they get the opportunity to explore new methods of teaching and learning. UNIV 201 and 203 do not teach content the same way traditional classes do. Instead, they focus on an inquiry question: how will we feed 9 billion people by the year 2050? UNIV 201 focuses on exploring the question from as many different perspectives as possible. When they get into 203, students start working on small but meaningful innovations to target hunger and food security.
AnneMarie’s background as a designer has influenced the teaching and assessment strategies. One major strategy used in design classes is peer feedback. When developing a design, it is important to hear as many different perspectives as possible so they can get a good view of their project. She applies this method in UNIV 203 to give students feedback on their innovations.
Strategy
Since the inquiry question is so broad, students can do any type of project they want. They choose their groups at the start of the semester, based on ideas proposed at the end of the previous course. No matter what type of projects students do, they need to ensure that they are meeting some specific criteria. In order to help them do that throughout the large project, feedback is an important component of the assessments.
Students do two short presentations to get this feedback. One is halfway through the course and the other is at the end. Each is worth only 5% of the course grade. The focus of these presentations is not on getting a grade but on getting extensive feedback. There are four sources of feedback: the instructor, group members, other peers in the class, and themselves. The group assessment has two components: one collective assessment and an individual assessment of each member. There is a different rubric designed for each component of the course, since each has a different perspective on the project.
AnneMarie and the other course instructors for UNIV 203 focus their assessment and feedback on how well students are meeting the course objectives and what they can do to ensure their projects form fully. The group self-assessment is more reflective. They have to assess how their collaboration is going and what challenges need addressing. They have to agree upon a group score out of five. Students assess each group member separately as well, commenting on their performance, participation and teamwork skills. All the other groups give feedback on the idea and implementation strategies and can give suggestions that those presenting may not have thought of.
Their first presentation is an explanation of what their plan is and how they will achieve their goals. There is a focus in the course on understanding the stakeholders, and so students have to present how they will include stakeholders in their project, and how specifically they will work with them. The second presentation is at the end of the semester, where students show the outcomes of their work, and the approach they used. This presentation is more reflective than the first one, but the process of giving and receiving feedback works the same way. After both presentations, AnneMarie meets briefly with each group and discusses how they will use the feedback and what strategies will be most helpful to them.
Students are initially apprehensive about the self and peer reviews. Being constructive means sharing both positive and negative aspects, and students do not always like being critical of their friends in the class. AnneMarie encourages students to focus on the work, not the person. She explains that in design classes, students are only allowed to make objective comments about the work they are assessing. They cannot give their opinion in any way. While this takes time to develop, it benefits students to hear genuine feedback from their peers. Many students also struggle with self-assessing at first. They are concerned about negatively affecting their grades and give themselves full marks. Others are overly critical of themselves. AnneMarie sometimes asks students about their self-assessments and encourages them to be fair. As they get more experienced with the technique, they get better.
Outcomes
Student projects incredibly high level and innovative. AnneMarie says these first year students exceeded her expectations and did better work than she has seen in third and fourth year courses. She believes that the open-ended nature of the course and the quantity of feedback contributes to their success.
Students have to have a lot of trust in the process for it to work. There needs to be transparency with students about how to give feedback and why this method is effective. When students commit to the process, they do a good job helping one another and are able to gain great insights on their projects.
The focus of the feedback method is to get as much feedback as possible and hearing different perspectives to help formulate the project. This feedback is essential for a project as massive and as broad as the one in UNIV 203, but it is just as important in disciplinary projects. AnneMarie believes that this feedback model can be applied in any project-based course. It does not matter what is being assessed, but rather that students get many different perspectives on what they are doing.
-Ashley Weleschuk
