Enhancing Scientific Essay Writing Using Peer Assessment

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Enhancing Scientific Essay Writing Using Peer
Assessment
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• Peer assessment an arrangement in which
  individuals consider the amount level, value,
  worth, or success of the products or outcomes of
  learning of peers of similar status (Topping,
  1998)

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• What is PEER ASSESSMENT?
• learning by doing (Mowl and Pain, 1995)
• Used to improve basic understanding
• Improve competency
• Encourage cooperative learning
• Provides detail comment and feedback this would
  be too time consuming for tutor
• Raises awareness and formative assessment (these
  are to encourage deeper learning approaches)

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• Essay Writing
• To enhance writing skills it is important to
• Report and document well
• Systematically collect and evaluate information
• Present it in a logical order
• Students are also required to appropriately
  collect, evaluate and analyse relevant
  information relating to their essay
• Brackley (1999) lecturers assume that students
  already possess necessary essay writing skill
  not true in all cases
• This problem is worse for students who arent
  native speakers of English

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• Process of Scientific Essay Writing
• 1) Systematically collect and read related
  material
• 2) Order information into logical argument
• 3) Critically evaluate information discard
  unnecessary pieces
• Essay should be written with precision

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• What is scientific essay writing?
• Brackley (1999) - writing is the key process to
  induct students into the culture of university
  thinking.
• Smith et al (1999) writing promotes higher
  order thinking
• Deep approach learning
• Deep approach learning relate new information
  to what is already known
• Surface approach learning repeat/memorise facts

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• Approaches to Essay writing
• Smith et al (1999) used SOLO Taxonomy to identify
  three main approaches to essay writing
• First two approaches unistructural and
  multistructural approaches
• serial listening
• paragraph integration
• instances of surface approach
• Third approach relational approach

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Method
• Experimenters chose assignment assessment task
• Essay Topic Review of subject matter of the
  Operating Systems subject
• Essay writing rewarded as twofold
• Achieve assessment mark for assignment
• Knowledge acquired would be useful for
  examinations
• Introduce students to scientific essay writing
  form

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Method
• Task divided into two steps
• students use library , their texts and internet
  to research, synthesise and write essays
• Marking other students essays essays remain
  anonymous
• Students graded on how well they reported their
  peer reviews

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results
• Tutors marks were much more generous than peer
  marks
• Student marker more critical
• exact the marking criteria
• Falchikov (1995) and Topping (1998) found
  similarity between tutor/student marking

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results
• Students asked to give opinions on review of
  essay assessment in terms of
• task description
• intellectual level
• essay length
• contribution to understanding of the subject
• Questions structured around five point
• Likert Scale
• 5 indicated strongly agree
• 1 indicated strongly disagree

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results
• Total of 63 responses collected out of an
  enrolment of 125
• Students also asked to comment on the idea of
  assessing other students work
• did they learn anything new?
• Invited to make positive and negative comments
  about essay assessment

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Results

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Discussion
• Majority of students took pride in own work
• if fellow students were suspected of cheating
  other students expressed joy (Davies, 2000).
• Topping et el (2000) students peer assessment
  was more detailed than that of the staff

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Conclusion
• Review essay writing promotes deeper learning
  approaches

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Limitations
• Table 4 20 students said they learnt a lot
  social desirability
• Students felt it was an inappropriate request to
  mark their peers work
• Some students had a lack of knowledge to do with
  the marking process
• Some students remained negative throughout whole
  process of experiment
• affects reliability of results

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• Experiment carried out by Anne Venables and
  Raymond Summit
• Benefits
• Majority of students empathetic in their
  marking
• Most students reported that writing essay in
  computer science subject enhanced their
  understanding of the material
• Students found task intellectually stimulating
• useful to better their understanding of course
  material
• Students found task of peer assessment
  challenging and insightful

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• Additional Research
• Peer Assessment and computer literacy for junior
  high school students in geography lessons in Hong
  Kong
• Adam Wong and Helena Ng
• General purpose software of peer assessment was
  used
• Tasks spread out over two lessons
• Lesson 1 students taught how to use search
  engines and find information
• Lesson 2 students taught how to organise
  presentation

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• Additional Research
• Title of Assignment Unstable Earth
• Students given one week to finish assignments
  related
• to tsunamis, volcanoes and earthquakes
• Present work as a PowerPoint presentation
• Can do work at home or school IT labs
• Students carried out questionnaire (open ended
  questions) similar to present study
• 5 point Likert Scale (1-strongly disagree,
  5-strongly agree)

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• Additional Research
• Results
• 118 students out of 166 responded to
  questionnaire
• 52 indicated peer assessment made learning more
  interesting
• Student Responses to " Peer assessment makes my
  learning more interesting

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• Additional Research
• Limitations
• No gender, age or ethnic variation
• All Chinese boys of the same age group attending
  full time grade eight classes
• Student whose work was being assessed wasnt
  anonymous
• limits validity of scores

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• Additional Research
• Previous research from students at Northumbria
  university has shown that
• Students didnt like being allocated into groups
• Score for interest was unfair
• Some topics were boring compared to others
• Prior to presenting in front of the class,
  students didnt show a positive attitude towards
  presenting after presenting to class, realised
  it was a good way of learning

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• Criticisms of Essay Writing
• Mcdowell (1995) task is artificial and
  unrealistic
• unlike the kinds of learning and communication
  activities outside academia
• not always this case
• Very little work reported on use of peer
  assessment as a techniques to improve scientific
  literature review of essay writing
• Davies (2000) adoption of peer assessment
  increases to the pressures on academic struggling
  to cope with increasing students numbers and
  limited resources in their courses

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• Students Perspective
• From a students perspective
• Scientific writing skills will be useful later in
  life is not sufficient motivation to practice
  those skills
• McDowell (1995) student learning is strongly
  influenced by assessment
• Some students saw peer assessment as an
  opportunity for the lecturer to save marking time

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• Educators Perspective
• Assessment can be used to improve learning
• Improve judging academic merit
• McDowell (1995) noted it is imperative to
  encourage and support students to adopt a deeper
  learning approach by giving detailed guidelines
  when setting such assessments

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• Evaluation of enhancing scientific essay writing
  using peer assessment
• Limitations
• Some tutors are reluctant to introduce peer
  assessment due to concerns about the validity and
  reliability of peer assessment
• More stress is put onto students when doing peer
  assessment
• Too time consuming for students
• Students who dont enjoy doing the project could
  reflect their mood onto the marking of their
  peers work

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• Evaluation of enhancing scientific essay writing
  using peer assessment
• Benefits
• Development of learner confidence in assessing
  and marking peers
• Development of learner ability to self evaluate
  and reflect
• Clear open marking systems
• Tutor is able to assess a larger amount of work
  and provide specific feedback
• Boud and Falchikov (1989) commented that
  Australian graduates considered evaluating their
  own work and the work of their peers a major
  important skill required by graduates