Context

This online course is for bachelor students following a vocational teacher education in technology subjects (TP).
It tackles communication, socialization and training, as well as vocational planning for competency development.
The instructor chose to use Peer Review to facilitate the feedback process for students, allowing them to cultivate their feedback-giving skills. In this activity, students listen to a podcast, produce and upload a summary report, and give feedback to each other’s reports. The aims and motivation in using this tool were to increase cooperation and interactions between learners, to teach students how to give qualitative feedback, and to develop students’ abilities to be critical of their own and each other’s work.

Constructive alignment

Learning objectives

• Students gain knowledge of current practices relevant to the teaching and learning field.

• Students are able to use ICT and other relevant technology during their studies.

• Student are able to facilitate their pupils’ developments in their reading, writing and oral skills.

• Students cultivate their feedback skills while being critical of their own work.

Learning activities

The main learning activity is set up in the form of a podcast, which covers the first learning objective. First, students actively listen to the podcast, and then they produce a summary document containing their reflection on the content. Subsequently, students hand in this document, and use Peer Review to carry out assessments of each other’s work using scale rating criteria. After reviewing each other’s work, they proceed to write a reflection on the feedback that they received from their peers, as well as a self-reflection.

These learning activities address the following levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Understanding - the information provided in the podcasts.

• Analysing - the information presented and annotate important aspects of the podcast.

• Evaluating - by reflecting and rating peers based on the input of the individual. contribution, learners reflect on what they have learned.

Assessment of learning outcomes

• Evaluation of learning outcomes was possible through assessing the quality of comments and feedback given by students to their peers.

• By monitoring the learners' interactions and what they have written as feedback and reflection, the instructor was able to assess learners’ ability to facilitate the development of their peers’ skills.

• The self-reflection part was not actively checked by the professor.

Notable outcomes

• Students were interacting more than expected, it was obvious they were having conversations outside of the platform in order to provide such input.

• The professor was surprised by the high student participation and by the questions students asked.
These questions had the effect of enhancing the quality of the discussions.

• The instructor was surprised at the intuitivity of the students and interactivity between them while using this tool. This wasn't the case before digitizing the feedback process with Peer Review.

Instructor

“This tool provided a better overview of students performance and progress over the duration of the course”.

The role of the instructor

• The instructor first explains the setup of the activity as well as giving instructions within the tool.
The interpretation of the scale rating criteria is explained to optimise feedback and evaluation.

• After students have progressed with the exercise, the instructor reviews the comments being made inside the platform. In class, the instructor mediates discussions covering points raised during the feedback exercise, whereby learners are guided towards the crucial aspects of the podcast.

• The instructor can overview the progress of each group and student within the platform, also seeing the number of comments each group has given and received.

Added value of technology

• “[Peer Review] enabled me to try new methods in teaching, prompt self-reflection on feedback, and guarantee anonymity in an online platform”.

• The FeedbackFruits group sync from the LMS used the pre-existing groups made by the instructor; manually selecting and constructing new groups was hereby avoided.

Possible variations

As well as using scale rating criteria, configurable rubrics can provide an alternative method in the feedback process. This allows a more detailed description of each performance level. The option exists to use either of these approaches for (summative) assessment.

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