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peerScholar User Manual-3

1. Student amp Grades and Reports tabs backgrounded peor Wed 3 28 PM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER MyFirstClass ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 0 REPORTS PA There are no assignments for MyFirstClass 17 At first there will be no assignments and the educator will be prompted to Add an Assignment Creating assignments will be the focus of Chapter 3 so we will return to this screen at that time For now though we will resist the temptation to click on that button or you can click on it skip to Chapter 3 and then come back Our focus at this time will be on adding students to a newly created class Note the number beside the Students amp Grades tab For a brand new class this will be 0 Once we have successfully added students to our class it will change to reflect the number of student added Click on the Students amp Grades tab to bring that screen to the foreground For a new class you will see the message There are no students in followed by the name of your class Under that you will see a green button labeled lt MANAGE STUDENTS gt peor Wed 3 29 PM Messages DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER MyFirstClass ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 0 REPORTS There are no students in MyFirstClass When you click the green lt MANAGE STUDENTS gt button you will be tak
2. option off When you are ready to complete the import process click on the green Finish and Add Users button on the bottom of the Step 2 portion of the window When you do so you will see an admittedly uglyish list to student names see the Note that started this section that you can copy and paste into some other file or do with as you please When you are done click on the lt Done gt button at the bottom of the list or just click the large X in the upper right corner to close the box 29 Confirmation Regardless of whether you entered students manually or used a CSV file import you likely want to confirm that what you did worked You can do that by clicking on the relevant class tab Once again the Assignments tab will be foregrounded but the number you now see beside the backgrounded Students amp Grades tab should correspond to the number in your class and if you click on that tab you can see a list of the students and their information peor DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS AnotherClass ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 4 REPORTS NAME Alex Poole Assan Mohammad Cheng Xu Joseph Humphreys SHOWING 1 4 OF 4 Reset Page Size to 100 2 2 Adding Teaching Team Members Educators sometimes have other individuals like student teachers or teaching assistants who may assist them with the administration or grading of assignments This section of the manual shows you how to set up accounts for these team me
3. 3 8 Using a Library Assignment Right so let me return to a point I made much earlier in this document We really want peerScholar to satisfy two different sorts of educators Some educators love technological toys and really want to get their hands dirty in terms of shaping an assignment to be exactly what they want it to be The previous sections of this chapter were largely meant to support those sorts of educators But other educators while still caring deeply about the educational experience their students have would prefer an approach whereby they could have an assignment up and ready with as little work and as little interaction with technology as possible Hey we at peerScholar know how hard educators work and how much is expected of them on a daily basis Time is tight and learning new things in depth takes time A simpler route that still produces quality results can be a precious thing to have That 1s what the library assignments are all about As the peerScholar user base grows and as more and more educators choose to share the 63 assignments they have created with the world the library of available assignments will become more and more rich At present an educator can search this library by level and subject area and find assignments that might be suitable for say their Grade 10 History course or their first year university Psychology course As will be described here it is then trivial to simply choose and
4. NAME EMAIL GROUPS STUDENTS STATUS LAST LOGIN Click on the green lt Add Team Members gt button When you do you ll see a window that looks just like the one we used previously to add students to your class in Section 2 1 The left portion of the window is titled Step 1 and the right portion Step 2 We ll be focusing on Step 1 for now Note that the portion under Step 1 contains two tabs labeled Enter Students Manually and Import User List CSV file respectively 27 Add Team Members x Step 1 Step 2 Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Filling out this form allows you to add users one at a time Please fill out the fields below and then click on the Verify User s button The result of this check with then be displayed in Step 2 and you will then be able to fix any verification issues Enter Import more user s and Finish amp Add User s to the system Role Required Teaching Assistant Search Users W ag No users verified Name Required Username Required Password Auto Generate Email Course S AnotherClass im Verify User s CANCEL Typically we only have a small number of team members associated with a given course so the Enter Students Manually tab will typically suffice By filling out the fields for the form we will be both creating accounts for our teaching team and associating those team members with the course we
5. 1 Sort by Create Phase 64 If you haven t you will see this peor Thu 10 17 AM Q Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER AndAnother ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 0 REPORTS 4 There are no assignments for AndAnother 5 In either case click on the green ADD AN ASSIGNMENT button When you do you will see this pop up Add an Assignment F CREATE NEW ASSIGNMENT AA USE A LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT At the beginning of this chapter we started here to create an assignment from scratch but this time we are going to click on the green lt USE A LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT gt button When we do we see peor Thu 10 21AM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER Man age Li brary Assig nments S S PUBLIC LIBRARY ft SCHOOL LIBRARY amp MY LIBRARY ALL LIBRARIES Q Subject All v Grade Level All v ASSIGNMENTS 66 Psych A01 Group 2 Steve Joordens USE Subject English Grade Level K Library School Library Psych A01 Group 1 Steve Joordens USE Subject English Grade Level K Library School Library Psych AO1 Group 2 Steve Joordens J USE Subject English Grade Level K Library School Library Midterm Practice Question Fun Steve Joordens Practice Question Optional Assignment USE Subject Psychology Grade Level University Library Sch
6. Chapter 4 Overseeing an Assignment Grading And Outputting Reports Your assignment is set up and the first phase opens Now what Well there are still three issues to address While the assignment is ongoing you can oversee the progress of your students and if necessary intervene in various ways Once the students have gone through all phases then if you choose to use the full peerScholar process and students have submitted a revision of their work you or a team member will have to evaluate their work Finally once you have evaluated their work you may wish to export the grades or export a summary report This final chapter then focuses on these administrative aspects and should complete the information you need to know to get the most out of peerScholar 70 4 1 Overseeing an Assignment Let me begin this section with a tip Whenever possible it is sometimes useful to have some sort of gap between phases when creating a peerScholar assignment Then as described in this section you should peek in on the assignment during this gap to make sure all is cool and to step in if anything needs rectifying This is an especially good idea for the first few assignments you do as it will also allow you to feel comfortable with were things are before peerScholar moves on to the next phase So how do you keep an eye on things Well this 1s where that student progress button at the upper right of the assignment bar comes in
7. Frost Ainsley Lawson Eve Forster Igor Mihajlovic Marta Wnuczko Nick Hobson Rob Walker Swetha Chinta Zenya Brown 57 Notice that in my example there is one student left in the Student List When peerScholar evenly split the class into three groups this student was left over The instructor can then click on that student and drag it to any of the three groups Similarly the instructor can also drag Team Members to groups which will assign the dragged Team Member to the group they were dropped onto and will display the Team Member on the top So if I named my groups BLUE RED and YELLOW if I dragged the remaining student to the BLUE group and then dragged the first three team members to BLUE RED and YELLOW respectively then when I was done it would look like this CREATE NEW GROUP LOAD EXISTING GROUPS Feedback Type Choose how the system Random students give feedback to peers from ANY group 1 will distribute assignments amongst groups SAVE GROUPS Student List BLUE Clear all RED Clear all YELLOW Clear all Adam Frost x Ainsley Lawson x Eve Forster x Lingyu Bai x Farishta Barez x Perry Rhod x Victoria Dukosk x Raymond Raheem x Nabiha Fatima N x Sandra Szabunie x Vithien Nguyen x Cynthia Yang x Abbygale Araos x Jing Li x Iram Sobia Khan x Zeba Sadia Sidd x Kasturi Rangara x Brian Longm x Kevin Bryan Far x Laxitha Kathirg x Jessica Thomas x Walid Ali P 4 Chloe Patricia x Se Jun Kim x Michael
8. History Profile a Canadian Politician Cogneeto SysAdmin g si Students write a profile for a Canadian politician who has aroused strong feelings both positive and negative among Canadians Based on Unit 6 Activities question 5 in Making History The Story of Canada in the Twentieth Century p 339 History 10 Public Library Making History Filming Canada s War Effort Cogneeto SysAdmin Students write a proposal for a feature movie about the various contributions Canada made to the war effort during World War Il Based on question 5 of Chapter 11 Activities from Making History The Story of Canada in the Twentieth Century p 192 History 10 Public Library SHOWING 1 3 OF 3 As you see you then get a title and short blurb describing each assignment Let s say the second in the list interests you well then you have three options You can click on the eye ball to preview it from a student s perspective you can click on the 1 icon to get a listing of the parameters of the assignment or you can click on the green USE button if you want to use the assignment Let s click on the green USE button which launches this pop up 66 Confirm Course X AndAnother SELECT This pop up is there simply to insure that you add the assignment to the course you mean to add it to The selection will default to the course you were in when you clicked Add an Assignment so assuming that is the course you want t
9. Revise Phase begins students can no longer submit assessments This point must be made clear to students and sometimes the easiest way to be clear is not to allow late submissions in any phase That decision is yours But peerScholar can handle late Create submissions and late Revise Reflect submissions without problem it s more a question of the culture you want to create One tip is the following Especially for your first few peerScholar assignments leave a space of a day or two between phases Then if some students haven t completed the work you can bump back the due date of the previous closed phase and give students a second chance to do their work immediately As long as the next phase has not begun you can move back the due date of the previous phase even for an ongoing assignment 38 3 2 Setting Up the Create Phase Now that we have the overarching assignment defined the next step is to give students more specific information about what is expected of them during each phase and to define exactly how you want each phase to run In terms of providing specific information think of it in the following manner When students log in to do a specific phase the first thing they will see is the instructions you provide to them about that specific phase What do you want them to do in this phase At the same time two buttons labeled Assignment and Rubric and if you chose to use it a third one labeled Graphic
10. a fairly small class you may wish to enter your students one at a time which you can do by keeping the Enter Students Manually tab foregrounded and filling out the appropriate fields in the form that makes up Step 1 Please keep in mind that the Username and Password that you enter will 19 be what that student will use to log on to the system and you will need to communicate that information to the students at some point Also keep in mind that each username must be unique the system will not allow you to repeat a username or an e mail address for different students When you are finished entering a given students information click on the green lt VERIFY USER S gt button at the bottom of the form When you do so it will check to make sure the username and e mail address are unique and if so it will then add the student to a list that will form under the Step 2 portion of the window Add Students x Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Edit User Result Remove Joe Student User Verified m x Filling out this form allows you to add users one at a time Please fill out the fields below and then click on the Verify User s button The result of this check with then be displayed in Step 2 and you will then be able to fix any verification issues Enter Import more user s and Finish amp Add User s to the system Role Required Student Search Users Name R
11. aspect of doing this is that it asks students to reflect on the improvement to their work that is due to what they learned from their peers so it directly asks them to reflect on their learning ENABLE SELF ASSESSMENT CH Self Assessment Main Question Think about your peers assignments and the feedback you received on your assignment Self Assessment Question 1 What rating would you give your original assignment Self Assessment Question 2 What rating would you give your revised assignment 50 Notice that there are spaces for you to add three text labels here The first is a place for you to specify the general question you want students to answer and while it 1s intended to be a self assessment question you can ask them anything you want The next two direct them which portion of the assignment to focus on when responding to the overall question Again although we envision this as being used to practice self assessment self reflection it can be used in other ways if the educator has different goals At this point you have specified all aspects of the assignment that will affect what students see and what they are asked to do while they do your assignment I hope it is now obvious how peerScholar assignments provide structured and repeated practice with the cognitive skills underlying our most desired learning objectives We have a ever growing research basis demonstrating the efficacy of peerScholar but sometimes t
12. by the basic peerScholar process transforming a good assignment into a great one For example while peerScholar does require students to think creatively when they think about how a given piece of work could be improved what is an educator really wanted to make creative thought the centerpiece of their assignment Well as assignment in which students are told about some fictional product and are then asked to script a short commercial that they think would sell the product Clearly this assignment asks them to think creatively which is the original purpose but notice that they will then also be assessing the creativity of their peers and then they will be considering their peers comments about their creativity Thus creative thought will be what all the thinking and communication revolves around amplifying the intent of the original experiment Of course this also means that an educator could introduce any learning outcome and have the skills underlying it exercised powerfully using peerScholar Perhaps an educator wants their students to learn to interpret graphical representations in which case the assignment would ask them to do just that and all of the subsequent thinking and communication would amplify that exercise Thus the basic peerScholar process always exercises that skills associated with our most desired learning objectives and in the right hands a peerScholar assignment can be used to exercise the skills related to virtua
13. defined in whatever manner the instructor wishes In my class I typically ask students to use this reflection box to justify why they revised their work in light of some comments but not others My intent is to have them combine self reflection and critical thought as they provide this justification 1 4 Final Thought on Learning Objectives Hopefully the previous two sections have convinced you that simply on the basis of what students are being asked to do peerScholar assignments exercise the kinds of cognitive processes related to our 13 most desired learning objectives especially those related to critical thought creative thought self reflective thought and both expressive and receptive communication and that is does so within a context that is powered by collaboration and mutual support Of course is does this using an internet based digital tool meaning that students are also gaining experience with some of the more technical skills often associated with 21 Century Learning The exercising of these skills is a direct result of the assignment process and thus occurs for every peerScholar assignment regardless of the actual specifics of the assignment itself However an educator can also enhance exercise with a given skill or even introduce new skills to be exercised by carefully considering the specific assignment they give to students In fact whatever skills are needed to perform the exercise are significantly amplified
14. information about their progress Instructors can click on a cell to see details about what the student has done and if they feel it is necessary they can edit anything that needs to be edited Thus this table provides an effective means to oversee what is happening and to intervene as necessary The vast majority of the instructors we have spoken with say that they liked this feature a lot initially but then eventually they reached a point where they just allowed the process to continue without oversight or intervention That is at first it was nice to be very plugged into what was happening but eventually after watching a few assignments closely it was obvious that once instructed properly students do what you ask them to do and there is no need to intervene That said some instructors and especially those teaching smaller more personal classes really like how this feature allows them to continue to be part of the assignment process even though the assignment is occurring online 74 4 2 Grading an Assignment The students have done their part They have successfully negotiated all three phases Now what Well the answer to that question depends a little on how you set up your assignment However let me stress the following The students will not be able to see their grades within peerScholar until you toggle the SHOW MARKS switch on the assignment bar to on Anything you do when it is toggled to off is
15. learning from a process that focuses primarily on the transmission of information to one that also includes repeated effective practice with the sorts of cognitive skills related to the so called transferable skills that are often highlighted in documents focusing on desired learning outcomes or 21 Century Skills It is thus hard to imagine an educator using peerScholar to create an assignment without that educator having a good sense of what skills they feel are most important and how to structure a peerScholar assignment to give students the optimum practice with those skills Given this in writing this manual I have two clear goals One is my desire to introduce you to all the various features in a manner that will allow you to create and oversee peerScholar assignments and then obtain desired reports and data when an assignment is complete My second goal is to make the connection between these features and the cognitive skills they exercise clear thereby helping you to maximize the educational power of this tool But now allow me to take a step backward for a moment The fact that you are reading this manual likely implies that either you or your institution has chosen to license peerScholar In so doing you or your institution receives more than just access to peerScholar To get the most out of this tool and to facilitate it s widespread use we recommend and support the following approach Especially in the case of i
16. role of the peerScholar certified IT professional is twofold First they provide basic support to both new and experienced users likely serving as the first point of contact for new users Second they provide the communication link that connects the institution to the larger peerScholar support network In addition to providing basic user support the central peerScholar team also hope to provide intellectual nourishment As we have seen repeatedly once passionate educators begin using peerScholar they find creative and powerful ways to use it and the impact of those ideas is enhanced when they are shared and celebrated Thus we have also created and continue to enhance a website accessible off of our main peerScholar com website that is designed to support the larger community of peerScholar users a place where you can meet other users share challenges share assignment ideas and generally enjoy the positive exchanges that are core to any community This manual then 1s one part of a larger set of supports It is a great place to begin but to truly get the most of our peerScholar it should be used in conjuction with interactions with your local peerScholar certified IT professional and with the larger peerScholar user community The manual itself is composed of four chapters this one included The first chapter introduces you to this manual and to the pedagogical basis of peerScholar The second chapter shows you how to set up a co
17. specify The first field asks you to specify a role and here we want to specify Teaching Assistant which is the default when you come here through the Manage Team Members pulldown If you believe this team member may already be in the system you can type their name in the search box and see if their information comes up If so you can just use it choose the course you now want to associate them with If they are not yet in the system then you need only to fill in each field Once again though keep in mind that the Username and Password you specify will become that individuals peerScholar username and their initial password and it is necessary that usernames be unique Often using their e mail address as a username assures uniqueness but you are free to choose what you like Whatever you choose as 28 username and password remember you ll have to communicate that information to the team member When you are finished entering a given team member s information click on the green lt VERIFY USER S gt button at the bottom of the form When you do so it will check to make sure the username and e mail address are unique and if so it will then add the team member to a list that will form under the Step 2 portion of the window Add Team Members xX Step 1 Step 2 Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File User Result Edit Remove Johnny TA User Verified m x Filling out this form allows y
18. taking your entire class and breaking it into smaller subgroups that still allow the assignment to function given the other constraints you have set e g number of peers Allow me to highlight that last point if you are ever trying to break your class into a certain number of groups and peerScholar does not present that number as an option that means that your previous settings make that number untenable given the algorithms peerScholar uses Either you will have to have less students assess fewer and be assessed by fewer peers to have the number of groups you want or you will have to be content with a different number of groups OK so why would anyone want to group anyway and how does it work Let me mention two examples and then give the hands on walk through for one In a conventional peerScholar assignment students and the peers they are assessing were working on the same core assignment That means that when the full peerScholar process is used there 1s the potential for students to borrow ideas from their peers when revising their paper Is this a good thing or a bad thing That often depends on the context When I ask students to form an argument about some issue I am not horrified if their ultimate argument was informed by the arguments they were exposed to in the assessment phase Arguments should evolve when new data ideas or perspectives are experienced However when management instructors were using peerScholar for busi
19. the window When you do so the contents of the Step portion of the window will change to a form that will allow you to map columns of your CSV file onto variable names that peerScholar users Add Students xX Step 1 Step 2 Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Your CSV Column Example First Name required select Last Name select Username required select Password required select Email select Student ID se No users verified CANCEL In most cases this mapping should be straightforward For First Name for example simply click on the pull down menu to see a list of the column names from you CSV and choose the one that corresponds to the students first names Do the same for Last Name although obviously choosing the column that lists the last names Jumping to the last one do the same for Student ID choosing the column that corresponds to the student numbers If you have a column with e mail addresses then also point peerScholar to that column for the E mail Address field but if you don t have e mail addresses or prefer not to link them to peerScholar leave that as 1s The most important fields are the Username and Password fields Whichever columns you choose for each of these will respectively set 23 the Usernames and Passwords that students will use to log into peerScholar It is very important that usernames be unique so if you d
20. things 1 the number of peers each student will be asked to assess and 2 the number of assessments each peer will receive in the Reflect Revise Phase There are a number of issues to consider when choosing this number The first is the assignment length I typically prefer assignments that ask students to write 1 to 2 pages of efficient text and I set this Number of Peers to 6 But if the assignments were longer say 5 to 8 pages each students would likely get annoyed at having to 43 read so much So in that case I might use a lower number like 3 or 4 So more generally keep student workload in mind However if the grade students will be receiving is the average of the grades given to them by their peers as often happens with the without revision assignment type is used then you need to have at least 5 or 6 peers assessing each piece for that average to be a justifiably valid measure of quality So in those cases I would assume a Number of Peers at about 6 and then make sure the assignment was not so long as to be asking too much from your students The next thing you can modify is whether or not you want the peer assessments to be anonymous PEER ANONYMITY DURING ASSESSMENT on The default is set to on reflecting qualitative findings we have that suggest students feel they can be more direct and honest when they are presenting their feedback anonymously However if you prefer that students see th
21. to self assess but a typical self assessment question would be something like Now that you ve submitted your work take another look at the rubric What mark do you think your work deserves ENABLE SELF ASSESSMENT CH Self Assessment Question Now that you ve submitted your work take another look at the rubric What mark do you think your work deserves Of course the goal of self assessments is to encourage students to reflect on the quality of their work and as you ll see you can enable them in every phase if you wish Our research however suggests there is some risk to enabling it in this first Create Phase That is students have a tendency to overestimate the quality of their work so they give ita high grade This high grade then constrains the range of grades they give to peers So our advice is the following If you have a good reason for enabling self assessment in the Create Phase go for it But if you don t have a good reason to do it in the Create Phase it might be better to not do it and do it instead in one or both of the subsequent phases That s all there is to do with respect to setting up the Create Phase By the way it s always a good idea to save your work from time to time so why not hit the green SAVE button at this point 3 3 Setting Up the Assess Phase The Assess Phase is the engine that really drives all of the pedagogical power of peerScholar This is where students will
22. undergo thorough research to insure they do enhance both learning and user Satisfaction I want to complete this manual by stressing that while I may have referred to peerScholar as a tool it 1s actually much more than that Yes it can take any assignment an educator 84 currently uses and make it better by giving students extensive practice with critical thought creative thought clear receptive and expressive communication and self reflection But it 1s especially powerful when the learning process it supports is applied to assignments that are also created to exercise critical learning objectives These assignments will come from educators not from peerScholar itself and we very much would like to work closely with innovative educators to build and share powerful assignments that can impact student learning worldwide If you are such an educator please go to www peerScholar com to become part of our peerScholar community 85
23. ALE button label them to fit the rubric you are using and by checking the comment box also include a text box that students will use to justify the ratings they provide This rating scale approach is very powerful when used in conjunction with a good rubric especially when working in a domain or with a student group that benefits from a very explicit assessment approach Let me offer one word of advice with respect to these assessment options If I were to use the rating scales I likely would not use the overall comments or vice versa Asking students to do both overall 46 comments and comments related to specific ratings seems a little excessive and runs the risk of making them dislike the endeavor So while I am comfortable combining inline comments with either overall comments or specific rating scales I would discourage using all three approaches to assessment simultaneously Finally students can again be asked to complete their Assessment Phase by performing a self assessment ENABLE SELF ASSESSMENT fon D Self Assessment Question Based on the peer assignments you reviewed what rating do you think your original assignment or first draft deserves I personally believe this is a very good idea The students are in a critical thinking evaluative mindset after having just assessed their peers and I see this as a fantastic time to have them turn that mindset on their own work I almost always turn this option on and u
24. B AL E STUDENT PROGRESS a Reflect Revise Eg Evaluate SHOW MARKS CHD 0 4 Completed When you click on this button you will see a student list open up below the assignment bar that includes some specific information about how things are going broken down by each individual student in your class Before anyone has done anything it will look something like the picture below Note that there is really not much to report at this point because none of the students have done anything 71 Making History Profile a Canadian Politician aat E AndAnothe STUDENT PROGRESS gt v J Create Wa Assess Reflect Revise ap Evaluate SHOW MARKS CHD 0 4 Completed CHD 0 4 Completed Q STUDENT CREATE ASSESS REFLECT REVISE 4 EVALUATE FIRST NAME A Z v A Student n Progress D Final Grade astudent B Student In Progress EHD Final Grade ostudent C Student n Progress aap Final Grade cstudent D Student In Progress uD Final Grade dstudent SHOWING 1 4 OF 4 Reset Page Size to 1000 y But as students begin to work on the assignment you will see the information in this listing change For example I am going to log in as A Student and B Student and do a little work Here goes OK admittedly I didn t really do the assignment I just copied some documents I had into the assignment But nonetheless let s note what is changing First on the assignment bar itself you can see that some students are beg
25. Bakshy x Alisha Bhojani x Nadine E x Hong Jia He x Amanda Pauline x Jacqueline S x Team Member List Jonathan Tham x Maria Admira Sh x Sarah Joh x Adam Frost Ainsley Lawson Eve Forster Igor Mihajlovic Marta Wnuczko Nick Hobson Rob Walker Swetha Chinta Zenya Brown Now let s shift our attention to the very top of this screen which looks like Feedback Type TPA TEE PEE EE i Random students give feedback to peers from ANY group Choose how the system will distribute assignments amongst groups SAVE GROUPS Notice the SAVE GROUPS button that you can use to save these groups Once you have set up and saved groups for a given class you 58 can re use this grouping in subsequent assignments by choosing the LOAD EXISTING GROUPS button instead of creating groups from scratch each time Also notice the Feedback Type selector This allows you to choose one of three potential ways in which the groups can interact during assessment Random students give feedback to peers from ANY group Between Groups students only give feedback to peers from OTHER groups Within Groups students only give feedback to peers from THEIR group Random students give feedback to peers from ANY group bee aw I arr hee a II werk a mua bee aw Il The default is to have students assessing each other randomly as if the grouping structure was completely irrelevant However you can use the Between Groups option t
26. Organizer will always be present and students can click on them any time to be reminded of the overall assignment and assessment rubric So the overarching assignment is always available but it is the specific details of what they are to do now that are in the forefront In keeping with this when you click on the Create link the first thing you see at the area on the left 1s a text box for you to give your students any specific Instructions amp Tips particularly with respect to this phase INSTRUCTIONS amp TIPS Source X h v lt 2 a do fio e Be Ose BB Use x xX Ar Ay wm iF EH B2BZE2ZY FB K You will create your assignment and save it by the due date 39 So you might say something like Before doing anything first click on the Assignment button and re read the overall assignment then click on the Rubric button and remind yourself about how your work will be assessed With these things in mind check out a number of different advertisements on YouTube Don t just pick the first one you find because your analysis will be better if you can find an ad that gives you a lot or better yet something unique and interesting to talk about So look at a few think about analyzing each then choose the one that will allow you to show your understanding the best You may also wish to emphasize due dates and any policies you have with respect to late submissions or the like but again keep it f
27. RADE Advar Instructor s Grade M 100 J Criteria points lean AS Or ADD CRITERIA PR AVERAGE PEER GRADE C The first option that can be set is whether or not to include the students names at the top of the grading interface STUDENT ANONYMITY DURING EVALUATION on ED Students names are not displayed to the instructor during the evaluation phase thereby focusing evaluations on the work itself without consideration of who submitted it As odd is it may seem to many of us who educate students often worry about bias in the grading process that might be associated with them personally or with a cultural to which they belong as signified by their name Given this they really appreciate knowing that they re name is not included and thus that they are being graded only on the basis of the work they submitted Thus we recommend setting this option to ON Of course once the grading process is complete the grades are re associated with the student names before grades are exported automatically integrated into the LMS or provided within a report Moving on there are two sections below the Student Anonymity option The first is labeled INSTRUCTOR S GRADE and the next is labeled AVERAGE PEER GRADE Each has a slider to determine the weighting given to each evaluation source 1 e the instructor versus the 52 peers and these sliders are linked such that the total weight is always 100 For example if one wished the i
28. REPORTS 4 There are no assignments for MyFirstClass b If the course already has some assignments 1n it those assignments will be visible and the green lt Add an Assignment gt button will be to the upper right 31 peor Wed 4 53 PM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER AnotherClass ASSIGNMENTS 1 STUDENTS amp GRADES 4 REPORTS Example Assignment BLV E STUDENT PROGRESS 1 Create A Assess G Reflect Revise Ay Evaluate SHOW MARKS CHD 0 4 Completed CHD 0 4 Completed In either case the first thing to do is to click on that button When you do so you will see an Add New Assignment pop up box that asks you to choose whether you wish to lt Create New Assignment gt or lt Use a Library Assignment gt We will revisit the use of library assignments near the end of this chapter so for now click on lt Create New Assignment gt Add an Assignment x F CREATE NEW ASSIGNMENT AM USE A LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT This will populate the assignment tab of the specified course with a new assignment bar It will be waiting for you to give your assignment a name Type in a name and then click on the green lt Save amp Continue gt button that is located at the upper right of the assignment bar just left of the lt X gt you would use to cancel the new assignment if you wanted to peor Wed 4 55 PM LO TEET Manage Library Professo
29. Revise Grading Options Advanced Options Library Assignment Setting Optional PREVIEW SAVE SAVE amp FINISH CANCEL 34 peerScholar assignments can be thought of as three sub assignments conducted within the context of some larger overall assignment That is the Create Assess and Reflect phases all have their own individual tasks that students must perform but all are performed in the context of some larger overall assignment Thus the first thing the educator must do is decide what that overarching assignment is and then provide the students with the information and resources they need to do it well They also need to specify This is what the Assignment amp Dates link is all about When you click on that link the area to the left opens up the Assignment and Media definition screen The text box is where the educator describes the over arching assignment to the students without worrying about the details of the Create Assess or Reflect Revise phases What is it that students are supposed to be doing in this assignment The Add Media icons above and to the left of the text box allow the educator to supplement the written instructions with an image video file audio file or any other digital file e g a PDF reading the students must react to They work in the typical browse manner in the sense that clicking on an icon calls a pop up box that allows one to browse their computer and choose
30. Scholar User Manual Version 1 1 Steve Joordens Advanced Learning Technology Lab University of Toronto Scarborough www peerscholar com www stevejoordens com Contact for peerScholar Europe bob peerscholar eu Table of Contents Welcome to peerScholar w scccccccccccccccccccccccccccccceccees XX Chapter 1 Setting the Stage rcccccccccsecccscccccccesccccccecss XX 1 1 Introduction to this Manual ccc ec cee eee e eee ees XX 1 2 The Pedagogical Basis of peerScholar 088 XX 1 3 The Basic peerScholar Process cece ccc eee cece cece eens XX 1 4 A Final Word on Learning Objectives see eee XX Chapter 2 Creating and Populating a Class cccceccceess XX 2 1 Creating a Class and Adding Students _ 45 XX 2 2 Adding Team Members n sussssssnnsesssssssesensessseseseseeseso XX Chapter 3 Creating an ASSignmMent sssssssssossesssssesseese XX 3 1 Setting Up the Create Phase ccc c cece cence cece ees XX 3 2 Setting Up the Assess Phase cceceeec cee e cence eee eeeeees XX 3 3 Setting Up the Revise Reflect Phase 05 XX Welcome to peerScholar My name is Steve Joordens and along with my colleague Dwayne Pare we are the co creators of peerScholar We still both recall the conversations we used to have in our office in which we shared our delusions of grandeur with respect to watching the use of peerSchol
31. ake a good look at the name of the file that is created Some LMSs create long and complex file names that include many special characters If this is true of your file please resave it with a straightforward name to insure a smooth import Also make sure that the file that is being imported includes separate columns for the students last name first name identification number and hopefully but not necessarily also includes other columns like e mail address and perhaps an LMS username While you are looking at the file also take a look at the top row and note whether it contains actual student information or headings that explain the student information below it Usually the latter is true but you will need to know Taking a moment to verify these things before importing can save many easily avoidable annoyances 21 To begin the process of uploading a classlist start by clicking on the Import User List CSV file tab When you do so the portion of the window under Step will change to a smaller form Add Students x Step 1 Step 2 Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Using the import feature allows you to add multiple users at a time Please choose a CSV file from your computer either one you ve created or one provided to you by your school and import the users Map the fields of your CSV file to the ones required by the system and then click the Verify User s button The result of this check wi
32. ally all of the skills underlying our core learning objectives But we can do even better by connecting teachers with teachers and letting you all share your knowledge and materials Here s how it works When you save your peerScholar assignment it 1s saved to your personal library which means only you can see it But if you would like you can share your assignment either with other educators within 60 your institution or with the entire world To do this we will leave the Add Edit Assignment screen and return to one of the class tabs peor Tue 4 53 PM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER AnotherClass ASSIGNMENTS 2 STUDENTS amp GRADES4 REPORTS Filter Show All 2 Y Sortby Create Phase Example Assignment l Bee E AnotherClass STUDENT PROGRESS 7 Evaluate SHOW MARKS GRADE NOW Then look at the very top of the interface and click on the Library link When you do so you will see a window that looks like peor Tue 4 55 PM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER Manage Li brary Assig nments S PUBLIC LIBRARY M SCHOOL LIBRARY amp MY LIBRARY ALL LIBRARIES Q Subject All v Grade Level All v ASSIGNMENTS 66 Psych A01 Group 2 Steve Joordens Subject English Grade Level K Library School Library Psych A01 Group 1 Steve Joordens Subject Englis
33. am members grading they will each have to complete grading their subset of students before all the grading is complete The instructor can oversee the grading progress by clicking on the STUDENT PROGRESS button When marks are entered they will show up in the Evaluate Phase 79 To release the grades return to the relevant course tab find the relevant assignment then flip the SHOW MARKS toggle that you will see in the Evaluate section of the assignment bar When you do it will turn green as shown below Tue 2 18PM amp Messages PSYAO1H3 2012 HEQCO PSYAO2 2013 PSYAO2 SUMMER201 PsyA0O1 Summer2013 ASSIGNMENTS 1 STUDENTS amp GRADES 341 REPORTS Filter Show All 1 v Sort by Create Phase Animal Use Assignment Create an Argument B B This green box tells you that when students log in they will also see this box as green and when they click on it they will see the grade they received as will also have access to all of the peer reviews and individual ratings Should any student dispute their grade the instructor can continue to view all the details and edit grades just as described in this section 4 3 Outputting Grades or Reports Once an assignment is complete and graded it is possible to output either the grades or various reports related to that assignment To do this first go to the class tab for the class you re interested in then click on the REPORTS tab This will open up the Reports Ta
34. ar Create A student x draft file 832 docx EDIT CLOSE Once again this particular assignment required students to upload a file so what we see here is the file name If we click on it and assuming we have the software necessary to view the file in this case Microsoft Word then we will see what they uploaded That is it will download and open as a separate window outside of peerScholar 73 If however the student had entered their text within peerScholar itself we would see what they entered Note the EDIT button There are two common reasons why a teacher may choose to edit a student s assignment Itis possible that the student has said or done something inappropriate and the teacher wants to modify it accordingly before it is viewed by peers in the Assess Phase In our experience this almost never occurs but some instructors still appreciate the ability to check More commonly a student either did not submit an assignment before the deadline or wants to alter their submission after the deadline In these cases the student can send their instructor their assignment and the instructor can use the edit feature to paste it in In either case the instructor does their edits and then clicks on the DONE button and the edited version is then used throughout the remainder of the assignment The story is very much the same as the assignment continues As students complete the various phases this table becomes populated with
35. ar spread from our classroom to the world and having a positive influence on the future of education in the process At that time it was a deep hope a wish that is now coming true thanks very much to forward thinking educators like you So please let me begin this manual with a sincere thank you for you interest in peerScholar It truly is a powerful education technology that incorporates three processes long known to positively enhance learning in a manner the exercise transferable cognitive skills including critical and creative thought self reflective thought and both productive and receptive communication In one sense there 1s nothing new about peerScholar other than the fact that it now allows educators to harness these powerful processes in a manner that is easy to use and that actually saves rather that costs them valuable time The purpose of this manual is to show you how to create and administer peerScholar assignments and how to generate reports and export marks once an assignment is complete The basic peerScholar process is simple one and yet we have also tried to make the tool both flexible and powerful for those who desire something more than the basic peerScholar process We have tried very hard to combine power with ease of use and we are confident that you will soon feel confident in your ability to harness the power of peerScholar in your classroom or in whatever context you choose to use it in Before getting star
36. at your work is average at best and directly seeing submissions that are clearly better than yours can be more informative that any grades or comments might be Students must complete their assessments by some specified due date and time In all other phases an instructor can choose to allow students to submit late but for the assess phase students MUST complete their assessments on time 11 The Reflect Revise Phase The next phase can play out in two distinct manners that result in fairly different assignment types The critical distinction is whether or not students are allowed to submit revised versions of their assignment Generally speaking we recommend allowing revision and resubmission as doing so results in a true formative experience whereby students immediately use the feedback they receive to improve their work but doing so requires some expert the instructor or a teaching assistant to provide comments and grades at the end of the assignment Thus there are resource implications although these are not more and are typically less than those associated with a typical essay type assignment However in some contexts it is this ability to exercise all of these cognitive skills WITHOUT resource demands that makes peerScholar especially impressive Thus both types of assignments are supported Regardless of whether one is using the with or without revision assignment type the first step in this phase is identica
37. ble 80 peor Sun 2 23 PM O Messages ana ibra Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER AndAnother ASSIGNMENTS 2 STUDENTS amp GRADES 4 REPORTS ASSIGNMENT NAME ASSIGNMENT SUMMARY REPORTS STUDENT SUMMARY REPORTS STUDENT ASSIGNMENT REPORTS Making History Profile a Canadian Politician View View View Profile a Canadian Politician View View View SHOWING 1 2 OF 2 Reset Page Size to Default This table will list all assignments associated with that class and will give you three options for each 1 Assignment Summary 2 Student Summary and 3 Student Assignment reports Each will open up a table for inspection and to the upper left of each table is a CSV button that can be used to output the tables as comma separated files that can be imported in for example Microsoft Excel The Assignment Summary table is a straightforward set of descriptive statistics related to the assignment as shown below Export Fields Average Average Raw Standard 60 4 Kaung 14 9 41 7 83 3 a E 58 83 CANCEL SUBMIT The Student Summary table breaks down the assignment data by each student This table can become very complex is everything tagged to each student is displayed Thus before the table is presented a pop up window opens that allows you to specify only those indices you would like included in the table thereby making it as simple as possible The pop up looks
38. bout having students assess either others evaluations for example perhaps when working with very young children or those new to providing feedback this option can simply be set to OFF and no usefulness pull down will be presented Next via the Reflection option students can be asked to reflect on well on whatever the educator wishes them to reflect on now that they have essentially completed the assignment So for example 49 students might be asked to either justify their revisions if the full formative assignment type is used or they might be asked to specify what they will do differently in the future if the full formative model was not used REFLECTION on Pi e 3 N fl or hr wa 179 JT ho ri 3 ba ath TFET rl 3 Iry gt 7y 7 mill take ti Allows students to reflect on the changes they made to improve their work and or note next steps they will take to Boater z hoir fa Te ho Ro wt Ro eor o improve their writing in the Reflect Revise phase Reflection Instructions You ve just seen some feedback on your work as provided by your peers Based on this feedback what will you do differently the next time you have a similar assignment Finally after students have done everything else they can once again be asked to assess their own work This time though at least with the full formative assignment type is used they can be asked to assess both their draft and their final compositions The really nice
39. e Level K Library Personal Library Example Assignment Professor Brainiac R A a subject English ide Level K Library Personal Library Copy of Example Assignment Professor Brainiac 7 7 A A a USE subject English Grade Level K ibrary Personal Library SHOWING 1 4 OF 4 This is a list of the assignments that Professor Brainiac has created or modified and then saved to his personal library Notice that the left portion of the table provides the name and some subject and level information and then to the right of each assignment you see a set of icons These icons allow you to preview gain information about edit share or delete the assignment respectively 62 For now we wish to focus on the share icon If you choose one of the assignments and click on that icon you will see the following i 4 USE As illustrated at this point you can choose to share your assignment either with others in your school or with the world via the Public option Simply check off the appropriate box and your assignment is shared What that means is that when others click on their library they may now be able to see your assignment in their list If you shared with your school then others at your institution will see and use your assignment If you shared with the Public then anyone who uses peerScholar anywhere in the world will be able to see and use your assignment All of which brings us full circle
40. e identity of who they are reviewing and ultimately who reviewed them you can flip this switch to off Your next decision has to do with how you want students to assess one another and which particular options you want activated These are all configurable under the TYPE OF ASSESSMENT box TYPE OF ASSESSMENT Overall Comments OFF Inline Comments OFF Ratings OFF 44 We ve tried to give you lots of flexibility here but this is one area where I worry that the flexibility could result in some confusion So let me go through this carefully Turn on overall comments if you want to ask your students to provide some general overall comments on the pieces they are assessing For example I often will turn this on and I will ask them to give two overall comments one in response to Something this student is already doing well and another in response to Your idea about how this composition could be improved Note that once you turn the option on you can then add additional comments via the ADD COMMENT button and you can remove them by clicking on the little garbage can TYPE OF ASSESSMENT Overall Comments fon ID Overall Comments Label 1 Highlight something you really like about the composition something the author should co Overall Comments Label 2 Highlight one change that the author could make that you feel would most improve their wc ADD COMMENT So you can have as many overall comments as you l
41. ed to delete an assignment from your class 3 9 Summary Phew Now you are an expert with respect to creating assignments sharing them with colleagues and using assignments your colleagues have shared with you As you now can see peerScholar does provide a lot of flexibility in terms of how you create assignments You can use a library assignment and simply alter the dates you can start with a 68 library assignment and then customize it to your needs or you can create your own assignment from scratch No matter what tact you take it is still a very good idea that you understand what the various parameters do and how they effect the student experience But in all cases you will end up with an assignment that challenges students to think critically about whatever topic you set and then gives them exercise in terms of communicating with their peers and reflecting on comments peers associated with their work Let me also take this opportunity to mention our website again www peerScholar com One of the things we d like to do on this website 1s highlight some of the creative and powerful assignments that you all create So if you feel particularly proud of an assignment you created let us know and let s tell other educators about it The work you put into it could end up impacting many more students than those you see everyday In fact your assignment could have a global influence Seriously that s cool 69 Scholar
42. en to a page that will eventually contain a list of the students in the class but for a new class that list will be empty In the upper right corner you will see a green lt ADD STUDENTS gt button 18 peor Wed 3 32 PM Q Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER Manage My Students 0 NAME USERNAME LAST LOGIN EMAIL COURSE ID S there is no record When you click on the green lt ADD STUDENTS gt button a window will open The left portion of the window is titled Step 1 and the right portion Step 2 We ll be focusing on Step 1 for now Note that the portion under Step 1 contains two tabs labeled Enter Students Manually and Import User List CSV file respectively Add Students x Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Filling out this form allows you to add users one at a time Please fill out the fields below and then click on the Verify User s button The result of this check with then be displayed in Step 2 and you will then be able to fix any verification issues Enter Import more user s and Finish amp Add User s to the system Role Required Student atiii No users verified Name Required Username Required Password 7 _ Auto Generate Email Student ID Number Course S MyFirstClass gt Verity User s CANCEL Manually Adding Students If you have
43. equired Username Required Password 7 Show a list of usernames and passwords for printing Email username and password to users if email was Auto Generate provided 7 Email Enter Import Additonal User s or Course S MyFirstClass 1 Verify User s CANCEL Continue adding individual students in this way until all students have been added and verified under Step 2 Then click on the green Done button located at the bottom of the Step 2 portion of the window This will result in a list of the added students along with their usernames and passwords You can print out this list if you d like a record of the student information 20 Add Students x Communication Name Email StudentiID Username Passwor d neti joestudent school com 12345678 joestudent school com pSrocks Student nde Student2 school com 13245678 student2 school com pSrocks saas student2 school com 12354678 student2 school com pSrocks PRINT Importing a Student Classlist For any reasonably large class it makes more sense to simply import a classlist of student names and information rather than entering each student s information individually Before getting into the details of how to import the classlist let s first discuss the classlist file itself peerScholar expects an excel like classlist file that has common separate fields 1 e a so called CSV file If you are acquiring your classlist from an LMS t
44. er Step 2 being populated with your list of users 24 Add Students x Step 1 Step 2 Verified Users Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Edit User Result Remove Your CSV Column Example Joseph Humphreys User Verified m x First Name required First Name Joseph Alex Poole User Verified m x Last Name Last Name lt Humphreys Cheng Xu orean m x Assan Mohammad User Verified m x Username required UToriD jhumpheys Password required Student Number 11223344 Email e mail jh test com Student ID Student Number 11223344 t Show a list of usernames and passwords for printing Email username and password to users if email was provided Enter Import Additonal User s or CANCEL Under the list you see two options for getting this information to students The first default option is to show a list to you that you can print and then transmit to students however you like The second option is to e mail the username and password to each student Although this second option sounds tempting our experience suggests that it is only a good idea if a you have an e mail address on record for every student b you mapped that e mail field correctly in the previous step and c you are sure that the e mail address you have on file for a student is one they actually use Often one of more of these is uncertain so more often than not it is best to leave the Email username and password to users
45. esource and time demands can be logistically crippling or in situations wherein an educator wants their students to complete say weekly assignments to maximize their thinking and communication practice Alternatively after they have assessed the feedback from their peers students can then be given the opportunity to revise their draft with the aiming of using the feedback to improve their work self reflective thought expressive communication This 1s a true formative assessment context and a great deal of research has shown that students both appreciate and learn a great deal when they are given the opportunity to use timely feedback to improve their work In terms of maximizing the educational benefits of a peerScholar assignment this is the preferred assignment type After students submit their revision they can then be asked to self assess In the with revision assignment type they are typically asked to make two self assessments First they are asked to rate the quality of their initial draft and then they are asked to rate the quality of their final submission This enhances the kind of self reflection students are engaging in because they are not just assessing the quality of the given pieces but they are also thinking about their learning process by documenting their perception of the learning that has occurred As a final step students regardless of assignment type can be asked to write a short reflection piece
46. exercise the analytic comparison evaluation and categorize skills so important to critical thought and also where they will be pushed to effective communicate their creative ideas for improvement There are a number of options 41 related to this phase so let s go through them and make sure all are clear To start then let s click on the Assess link from within the Create an Assignment interface When we do so the first thing we ll again do is specify the Instructions and Tips for this phase Assess INSTRUCTIONS amp TIPS If you also want to give your students some specific instructions or tips to ne lp guide them as they comptete eacn phase of your assignment you can do that here Choose the phase you wish to add instructions or tips too then enter the instructions or tips in the text box Source v h v 2 Em AAD B AS OS B Bi U x XA Ara FP EB SEE G 3 Ms Continuing with the running example related to the overarching assignment I presented earlier in this chapter here is the sort of thing I might include here In this phase your primary task will be to assess the work of your peers with the goal of ultimately giving them one good idea about how their work could be improved I suggest you use the following approach when assessing your peers First read the analysis submitted by each of the 6 peers that have been assigned to you asking yourself which one seems better and why Then try t
47. ge then press the green Save and Finish button and your modified library assignment will appear on within the specified course tab Note that if the assignment appears but is greyed out that means it is not currently visible to your students If the date settings are not appropriate then sometimes this will happen automatically and you will not be able to make your assignment visible until you alter them appropriately But you also have control over making the assignment visible or not to students using the lock icon the fifth icon in the row that is presented just above the STUDENT PROGRESS button a 0 A L g STUDENT PROGRESS Actually since we re discussing these icons let me highlight what each does The first allows you to see the parameters of an assignment at a glance The next is intended to allow you to preview the assignment from a student s perspective As I write this we are not happy with how this works and will be fixing it very soon hopefully it works very well by the time you re reading this The third icon allows you to duplicate an assignment which is handy 1f you use the same general parameters and instructions across a number of assignments and just want to change the overall instructions and or the dates and times The fourth icon is used to go to the Add Edit an Assignment interface the fifth is the toggle to make an assignment visible or invisible to students and the final icon is us
48. h Grade Level K Library School Library Psych A01 Group 2 Steve Joordens Subject English Grade Level K Library School Library Midterm Practice Question Fun Steve Joordens Practice Question Optional Assignment Subject Psychology Grade Level University Library School Library The Science of Natural Disasters Cogneeto SysAdmin USE J USE J USE USE Students write a maaazine article about the causes and effects of a recent natural disaster Their articles should be This window shows you all the libraries available to you but for now let s just look at your library the place where assignments you have 61 created are stored You get there by clicking on the MY LIBRARY button from the horizontal selection bar Manage Li brary Assignments ALL LIBRARIES PUBLIC LIBRARY i SCHOOL LIBRARY amp MY LIBRARY Doing so will bring up a screen For me the screen looks like this peor Tue 4 58 PM Messages Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER Manage Li brary Assignments ALL LIBRARIES PUBLIC LIBRARY iff SCHOOL LIBRARY MY LIBRARY Q Subject All v Grade Level All v ASSIGNMENTS 4 Copy of Reducing Gang Violence On lt g Professor Brainiac USE ect English je Level K Library Personal Library Hamlet Family Disturbance Professor Brainiac R A a i G wi m Subject English Grad
49. h communicate their creative ideas to their peers and to evaluate and appropriately react to the feedback provided by their peers and it does so in a structured environment The best way to appreciate this claim is to consider it in the context of a typical peerScholar assignment 1 3 The Basic peerScholar Process peerScholar assignments are composed of four sequential phases Most of the specifics about what happens within a given phases can be configured by the educator and thus we be discussed more generally here Details about setting up a phase in specific way will be left to Chapter 3 The sections that follow describe the general peerScholar process To connect this process to the skill development claims made above I will at times emphasize the skills being practiced by noting them in parentheses after describing some aspect of the process The Create Phase In the first phase of a peerScholar assignment students are asked to submit some type of digital assignment as defined by their instructor It could be a written assignment a video an image or a piece of music expressive communication of whatever sort is desired In fact one of the nice things about peerScholar is that it allows very unconstrained open ended assignments and perhaps the best assignments are ones that push a student to think creatively creative thought or critically critical thought Whatever skill the assignment exercises in the student that exerci
50. he smell test is a great place to start Skills develop through repeated effective practice and given the process supported by peerScholar that kind of practice is core and can be then applied in the context of any specific assignment an educator thinks is effective for their goals 3 5 Setting Up the Grading Options The next option listed along the right side of the edit screen relates to grading options Once again peerScholar 1s a flexible tool both in terms of the exact form of the assignment one creates but also in terms of how that assignment will be graded and this link will allow the educator to specify a number of aspects related to grading and the choices they make will configure the grading interface that they or their team members use to evaluate students work When you click on the Grading Options link you will see the following screen to the left of the edit screen 51 Grading Options Specify the grading details for your assignment By default the instructors grade counts for 100 and the peer grade counts Ei Assi for 0 Using the Add Criteria button you can specify a break down of the components that you wish to go into your final a grade 0 Create STUDENT ANONYMITY DURING EVALUATION Oh Ass Students names are not displayed to the instructor during the evaluation phase thereby focusing evaluations on the work itself without consideration of who submitted it Refle Gradi INSTRUCTOR S G
51. he assignment added to just click SELECT Otherwise choose the desired course from the pull down menu and then click SELECT Either way you will end up back in the now familiar Add Edit an Assignment interface Click through some of the options in the menu along the right margin 1 e Assignment amp Dates Create Assess etc and notice that this time the all of the boxes are populated and all of the various parameters have been set according to the assignment creators preferences It is a good idea to look through these settings so you have a good sense of how the assignment as created will run If you want to use the assignment as is then all you need to do is specify the open and close dates and times associated with the Create Assess and Reflect Revise phases decide whether or not you want to allow late submissions in the Create and Reflect Revise Phases then click on the green Save and Finish That will take you back to your course tab which will now include your assignment AndAnother ASSIGNMENTS 1 STUDENTS amp GRADES 0 REPORTS Filter Show All 1 Sort by Create Phase Making History Profile a Canadian Politician eBsawt g STUDENT PROGRESS 1 Create A Assess E Reflect Revise E A Evaluate 67 Of course you are also free to alter any of the instructions or parameters to modify this library assignment to your specific goals In that case simply change what you wish to chan
52. ike and you can make them focus on whatever you like The next option is to turn Inline Comments on or off Inline Comments u OFF When inline comments is set to on then when students are assessing their peers written compositions they can tag additional comments to specific parts of the text This is useful for what I call micro level comments such as this isn t a sentence you lost me here this goes against what you said in your third sentence or not spelled right Little comments that show what the assessor was thinking as they read 45 the piece I typically have this set to on in addition to using the overall comments suggested above Some educators were not satisfied with the just the options above and asked for the ability to tie ratings and perhaps comments directly to parts of the rubric So imagine a rubric has five different factors that students are to consider They wanted students to give a rating to a piece on each of the five factors and perhaps also give a comment that explained that rating This is what the Ratings part of the TYPE OF ASSESSMENT box is four Ratings cx Ratings Scale Star scale Maximum Value 4 Scale 1 Label Overall Rating Include Comment ADD SCALE When turned on it allows you to specify a scale type that can then be re used across a number of different ratings You can add as many scales as you like via that ADD SC
53. inning to do the assignment Making History Profile a Canadian Politician B 8 AndAnother STUDENT PROGRESS 7 A Assess Reflect Revise oh Evaluate SHOW MARKS CHD 0 4 Completed CHD 0 4 Completed Notice the 2 4 Completed bar at the bottom of the Create Phase This feature alone is really nice just to let you know how things are going A word of warning though if you watch these numbers closely the fear you have about students doing their work at the last minute will be amplified It is truly amazing to watch how slowly this number grows 72 initially and how quickly its growth accelerates as the due date approaches Now let s click on the STUDENT PROGRESS button again and focus on the table of students that appears STUDENT CREATE ASSESS A REFLECT REVISE EVALUATE FIRST NAME A Z A Student Completed File Attached 115 11 KB B Student Completed File Attached 19 13 KB C Student C D Student Cam SHOWING 1 4 OF 4 Reset Page Size to 1000 This particular assignment required students to upload a file during the create phase rather than typing their work into a text window So now we can see that A Student and B Student have both done just that and we get a sense of the size of the file they have attached If you move your mouse over the Create cells associated with these students you will see a VIEW button appear and if you click on it the following pop up will appe
54. invisible to the students Final Mark is Average Peer Grade If you set up the grading options such that the final mark is to be composed only of the average peer mark see Pare amp Joordens 2009 then you have two options If you simply want to reveal the grades to the students then toggle the SHOW MARKS switch to on and you re done However if you want to look through the grades before releasing them to students then click the green GRADE NOW button in the Evaluate cell of the assignment bar Doing so will open up the same student progress table you would see if you had just clicked on the STUDENT PROGRESS button except that it will also display the final grade for each student in the EVALUATE cell of the table as shown below Profile a Canadian Politician ALV E STUDENT PROGRESS A 7 Evaluate SHOW MARKS STUDENT CREATE amp ASSESS 4 REFLECT REVISE 4 EVALUATE FIRST NAME A Z A Student Completed Completed Completed Final Grade 75 0 5 Words 0 Words 100 chng B Student Completed Completed Completed Final Grade 58 3 5 Words 0 Words 100 chng C Student Completed Completed Completed Final Grade 58 3 5 Words 0 Words 100 chng D Student Completed Completed Completed Final Grade 83 3 S Words 0 Words 100 chng SHOWING 1 4 OF 4 Reset Page Sizeto Default 75 If you wish to alter any of these grades before they are made available to students you can do so in the following manne
55. ir assignment You re done Incorporating An Expert Marker Ifthe Grading Options were set up such that part or all of the mark is to be provided by an Instructor or teaching team member then clearly some grading needs to occur before the marks can be released to the students This process begins just like the process described above First click on the green GRADE NOW button on the Evaluate Phase to open the student progress table If you have not yet done any grading you will see green GRADE NOW buttons in the Evaluate Phase for all students If you ve done some grading you will see grades for those you have graded and the green GRADE NOW button for those students who still need a grade Go to the first green GRADE NOW button and click on it to open the grading interface A a Evaluate lt Student 13 gt TEACHER S COMMENT S TEACHER S GRADE 0 Change 0 out of 10 View this student s initial submission Avg Peer Rating Notice that in the case displayed above the Student Anonymity During Grading option was switched to on and as a result the student name is not presented by rather a number is presented i e Student 13 This interface is specifically meant to give any grader efficient access to all the information they might need to grade and provide comments The best way to get a good understanding of this interface is simply to start clicking on the various components But here are
56. izing it as not useful useful or very useful using the pull down menu Then move on to the next set of peer comments and assess those continuing to do this until all peer comments have been assessed You will then be shown your original draft composition and will be allowed to revise it in accord with the feedback you felt was useful Once you have completed your revision you will be presented with a reflection box Use this box to justify the changes you made and didn t make to your work Finally given everything you have learned while doing this assignment you will be asked to look back at your work and assess both your draft and your revised composition This description assumes certain settings that you may or may not use in your own assignment These settings are specified in the area below the Instructions and Tips box and each will now be discussed in turn Critically peerScholar then allows you to specify whether or not you will allow your students to submit a revised version of their composition via the Revise Resubmit option REVISE RESUBMIT C Recall the earlier discussion of the two assignment types commonly used in peerScholar If one wishes the process to end after students see 48 and potentially assess the feedback they received with the students grades being based on the average peer rating of their work then Revise Reflect should be switched to OFF But if the full formative proce
57. l Once the phase opens students see the comments and assessments that their peers provided for their draft submission They are typically instructed to move from peer to peer reading the feedback carefully receptive communication and assessing how useful they feel the feedback is with respect to helping them improve their work critical thought self reflective thought by choosing either not useful useful or very useful from a pull down menu When a without revision assignment type is used the process can end here with students receiving a grade that 1s equal to the average of the peer grades given to their work In research from our lab we have shown that as long as this average is composed of at least four to six peer ratings then it is as reliable as a single grade provided by an expert grader See Pare amp Joordens 2008 If the instructor wishes though they can also add another feedback informed self assessment reflective thought step which would prompt the students to provide the grade that they now think there original draft deserved Once again the primary advantage of the without revision approach is that is does not require the educator to assess the students work directly Thus one can give students practice with all of the highlighted cognitive processes in manner that is extremely time and 12 resource friendly This can be a major advantage when peerScholar is used in very large classes wherein r
58. learned via mere exposure to that information as long as the student 1s sufficiently engaged and the information is presented in a structured and comprehensive manner By using a good text that embodies a coherent curriculum especially as presented by a passionate and effective teacher a student can learn a great deal about the facts theories important figures and events etc that define the subject area of some course However educators are increasingly under pressure to teach more than just the core content area of their courses They are being asked to also teach the sort of transferable skills the so called 21 Century Skills that will help their students succeed in general Often these skills are specified in terms of specific learning objectives and these objectives vary somewhat from one specification to another but certain core skills reappear consistently These core skills include teaching students to think critically creatively and reflectively while also teaching them strong communication skills including expressive writing and speaking but also including receptive communication skills That is the ability to critically listen to others especially when those others are trying to give suggestions or advice Skills however cannot be learned by simple exposure Instead one only learns how to do something by doing it repeatedly preferably within a structured environment that provides immediate feedback on perfor
59. lexibly its difficult to specifically show all the possibilities Instead I will focus on the associating a team member with a subset of the class example as it illustrates the basic steps that are common to any use So now let me remind you about Section 2 2 Setting Up Team Members Before you can associate team members with subgroups of students you will need to make sure the team members exist in peerScholar So do that first then continue on The first thing you would do is click on the Advanced Options link from the right margin of the Add Edit an Assignment interface When you do you will see a blurb over an icon with the icon labeled as Divide class into groups Add Edit an Assignment Assignment Title Copy of Example Assignment Advanced Options Say 8 amp 5 a gS If you want to break your class into multiple groups each of which has their own specific s gs you can do so usin Ga tool provided here This will allo low you to hav Madi your students work on one ass ha ijl the led ag i another a The firs rst group can assess s the secon gaiit vice lle is illidindypyy vant if you don t want students to borrow information from their peers when workin ijt own assignme L Create Ea Asse Refles X Gradir Advan 55 Click on that icon then click on the green CREATE NEW GROUP button When you do you will see the following pop up Create groups for assignment Number of gro
60. like this 81 Export Fields Student Information Student ID M Student M Student Email M Username Completed Status for Create Assess and Reflect Revise Phases Ratings Student received from peers TA Average peer rating Detailed breakdown of peers and their ratings Feedback To Select Detailed breakdown of peers and their ratings How useful peers found the students feedback M Usefulness Ratings Average Student s self assessment rating s Instructor Grades Instructor Final Grades M Final Check off only those indices you are interested in viewing then click on the green SUBMIT button The table you have defined will then appear and will look something like this Export Fields 10083130 fakel student astudent A Student B Student C Student D Student 10088679 bstudent B Student A Student C Student D Student 10088681 cstudent C Student A Student B Student D Student 10088680 dstudent D Student A Student B Student C Student Finally the Student Assignment Reports allows you to output student work if you wish to view it offline Once again the first step in the process is to specify exactly what you wish to output view a pop up window that this time looks like this 82 Export Fields Student Information v Student ID M Student M Student Email M Username Student Draft Assignments Student Final Assignments A Overall Comments the student gave to their peers Inline Com
61. lly any learning objective 14 Scholar Chapter 2 Creating and Populating a Class A given educator may be teaching several classes with different students and may wish to have peerScholar assignments for each class They may also be working with teaching team members who they wish to associate with given classes This chapter describes how to create new classes and how to populate each class with students and team members NOTE This chapter assumes that the educator already has an account and has been associated with a specific school within peerScholar Typically this account is created at the time of product registration However when an educator begins using peerScholar for the first time within an institution that has a license they may need to contact their local peerScholar IT Support team to get set up 15 NOTE If your institution uses a learning management system LMS and if peerScholar has been integrated with that specific LMS then Section 2 1 will be unnecessary as classes and students will be automatically configured by the system However the system will not automatically configure team members so Section 2 2 may remain relevant Related to this because we will soon have peerScholar integrated with all LMSs and because doing so will render everything described under Section 2 1 irrelevant some of the interfaces you will encounter as you go through Section 2 1 are not as attractive as they could be It
62. ly a clear presentation to students of what is expected and what will be assessed and then they save that rubric as a PDF Then by clicking the Add Rubric button one can then browse to and choose the created Rubric It is important to note that once the educator has defined the overarching assignment then it and all of the other files associated with it will be available to the students at all stages of the assignment Just to make the distinction between the overarching assignment and the information we will be entering in the Create Assess and Reflect Revise phases clear let me suggest an overarching assignment 36 and then build off of it in my discussion of the subsequent stages of assignment creation An overarching assignment could be something like the following As specified by the advertising expert who came to our class many advertisements do not give much information about the product at all but instead simply associate the product with various other positive stimuli to make us like it Your assignment is to look at some advertisements on YouTube find one that you think fits this positive association notion well then submit the link along with your analysis of what those associations are and how they might sell the product Of course this is a peerScholar assignment so after you submit your analysis you will assess analyses submitted by some of your peers and then you will see the asse
63. mance For example imagine you would like to learn piano You can learn a lot about playing pianos by reading books or listening to a piano teacher They can teach you how the keys relate to notes they can show you the patterns of certain scales etc You can gain the information quite easily But if instead you want to be able to play piano no book or teacher will suffice You must simply start to play poorly at first but with increasing practice the skill becomes more fluent and more natural This is how skills are learned and this is the sort of learning peerScholar is aimed at supporting In fact I think this is why so many educators are frustrated by the desires put on them to teach 21 Century Skills It is not that they do not appreciate the relevance of those skills but rather it is more a question of how Given the time already spend on the core course content how are they to find the time and resources needed to add in the sort of repeated effective practice that 1s required to build up a skill base Does their whole approach to education have to change and what exactly should this change look like peerScholar provides a concrete answer to this how question one that does NOT require major modifications to the existing curriculum By employing peer and self assessment within a formative learning context the peerScholar process naturally requires students to think critically and reflectively and to bot
64. mbers and how to associate them with a specific already created class Sometimes this is done as a first step that enables other possibilities For example when discussing the Advanced Options in Chapter 3 I will describe how one can subdivide a class into smaller groups and then associate a given team member with a given subgroup When this is done that team member then only sees their subgroup which can make tasks like grading much more efficient However in order to do something like that the team members first need to be recognized by the system and associated with a class and that is what PII show you how to do here 26 You can begin this process from anywhere within peerScholar Just above the course tabs you ll see some other menu options and the one we are interested in here is the one labeled Manage When you mouse over that label you will see a list of different things you can manage including My Team Members If you then mouse over that you will see you list of courses Manage Library Professor Brainiac Logout My Announcements My Classes My Default Settings My Students amp GRADES 4 REPORTS My Teaching Team MyFirstClass AnotherClass AndAnother To associate team members with a specific course click on that course from the list When you do a new window will open peor Wed 4 31 PM Messages DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER Manage My Teaching Team 0 aye
65. ment off in the Create Phase for that group only with all other aspects of the assignment left the same This shows you the power and flexibility that the grouping function affords Perhaps this section blew your mind either because you see all that is now possible or because I have confused you entirely It is absolutely true that the simple little Advanced Options link provides great power but remember that iconic phrase from Spiderman with great power comes great responsibility When you are using grouping for any reason it is always a great idea to go a little more slowly and to make sure you are specifying things as you intend You can use this feature to do almost anything you want and many other things you don t want So be careful and double check your thinking If you don t need to use grouping feel free to ignore that link completely 3 7 Saving and Sharing Your Assignment OK you ve done it You have completely defined your peerScholar assignment Congratulations all of this will be second nature in no time But now what As I ve mentioned before we view peerScholar as a tool that can significant enhance learning without requiring a complete disruption of how teachers currently work In fact we would like peerScholar to make life easier not harder for teachers So yes one can take an assignment they already use and simply by presenting it within peerScholar students will gain enhanced practice at virtu
66. ments the student gave to their peers What you will ultimately then see depends on what is specified in this table but the results are self evident For example if you select Student Final Assignments you will see each student s name and their final assignment 83 Scholar Chapter 5 Summary and Near Future When I started writing this manual I had no expectation it would be longer than 80 pages In many ways peerScholar 1s a relatively simple tool that allows educators to effectively harness three proven educational practices peer assessment self assessment and formative assessment However we also tried hard to make peerScholar a flexible tool and this enhanced flexibility does mean that the effective use of peerScholar can take a while to describe I thank you for reading and I hope you learned a lot One of the huge challenges of writing a manual for peerScholar is that it is an organic product that keeps growing and improving We are aware of certain aspects of the current build that need improving and we are working on those now We are also integrating peerScholar with a wide variety of Learning Management Systems LMSs to provide single sign on and gradebook migration which will make peerScholar even easier to use 1f you mount your course using a supported LMS And of course we also have ideas about how peerScholar can become an even more powerful tool and those ideas are being built into Version 2 0 and will
67. nd a simple description of the settings you can choose and will briefly tie them into some educational principles and best practices 30 3 1 Creating an Assignment There are two ways to create an assignment within peerScholar An assignment can be created from scratch with the educator essentially beginning with a blank slate and specifying all aspect of the assignment by choosing to turn certain features on or off or by specifying various other parameters Alternately one can choose an assignment from an ever growing crowd sourced library of assignments and then either use it as is or tweak it to fit their needs However in order to use library assignments well it helps to have a good understanding of the parameters that can be changed and what specific settings of those parameters imply in terms of the ultimate flow of the assignment With this in mind I ll first walk you through the process of creating an assignment from scratch and once through that we will revisit the notion of beginning with a library assignment As a Starting point log into peerScholar and then choose one of your course tabs If there is currently no assignment in that course tab you will see a message that says There are no assignments for followed by the course name Underneath that you ll see a green button that reads lt Add an Assignment gt Wed 4 49 PM Messages MyFirstClass ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 2
68. ness case studies they wanted to discourage the borrowing of ideas So they used what we call the A B design That is using the grouping feature they split their class into two halves One half was given Case A to analyze the other was given Case B Then during the assessment the A students assessed the B students and vice versa Thus the students ultimately had to learn two cases and while they could borrow general ideas they would at least have to adapt them to their own case peerScholar allows A B designs via grouping Another common use for grouping 1s to assign teaching team members to separate subsets of the class typically for evaluation purposes For example my Introduction to Psychology class has 1800 students and 54 their peerScholar assignments are ultimately graded by about 9 teaching assistants So we create 9 groups and assign a teaching assistant to each group of roughly 200 students Now when one of them logs in to grade they only ever see their 200 students rather than seeing and having to page through all 1800 There are many other things you can do with grouping including using peerScholar as an educational research tool by performing within class manipulations of the assignment and assessing their effects on learning and or satisfaction Hopefully these examples give you a sense of its potential usefulness so I will now turn to giving you a sense of how the grouping function works Because it can be used so f
69. nstitutional adoptions we recommend that some individual be identified perhaps one that already helps with information technology support to become your certified peerScholar IT professional That individual or individuals in a larger institutional adoption will get free access to our training course which is available at www peerScholar com The course is composed of less than 20 short videos videos that are publically available but when used in conjunction with our registration and assessment modules will give your IT professional formal certification This will allow your peerScholar certified IT professional a direct line of communication with the central peerScholar support team In a sense they will become an extension of our team Once a certified peerScholar IT professional is in place that individual or individuals will serve as the primary point of contact for your institution Any colleagues who are using peerScholar or are considering using peerScholar would interact with your local professional who given their training should be well equipped to provide virtually all the support that is needed However in cases where an educator wishes to use peerScholar in some highly exotic manner or if potential bugs are discovered the IT professional would serve as the intermediary bringing any such issues directly to the central peerScholar team and transmitting the responses or suggestions back to the educator Thus the
70. nstructor grade to be worth 75 and the average peer grade worth 25 of the final grade one can simply slide either slider to the appropriate value and the other slider will change appropriately along with it In addition the instructor s grade can be broken down into several specific criteria each of which can be given a specific value This criteria are added using the ADD CRITERION button which then prompts the user for a criterion label and a mark value So for example one could combine the use of sliders and instructor criteria to produce something like the following INSTRUCTOR S GRADE Instructor s Grade go D 75 Quality of Draft 2 points Quality of Final 4 points Ej Quality of Comments to Pe 3 points Appropriateness of Revisic 3 points ADD CRITERIA AVERAGE PEER GRADE Average Peer Grade _ lt lt lt D 25 amp 3 6 Grouping via Advanced Options For many educators the Advanced Options link off from the right margin of the Edit Window need never be clicked However for some it can add a level of flexibility that allows one to do certain things that would not be possible otherwise In this section Ill begin by giving you a sense of what grouping does in general and then I will highlight a couple of ways in which grouping is sometimes used 53 Generally speaking then there are times when it can be useful to split an entire class into subgroups The grouping function allows you to do just that
71. o have one group assess only the other group and vice versa as is done when the A B design is implemented Using the Within Groups option you can essentially have compartmentalized assignments whereby those in Group only assess others in Group 1 and so on for the other groups This option is great when doing educational research where the different groups might have slightly different assignment options Once you have made your selections save your groups it will ask you to give your grouping a name when you do so Now if you decide to do additional assignments with this class and wish to use the same grouping you can simply load this grouping and you re set There is one more point to mention about grouping Once you have saved a grouping then when you return to the Add Edit Assignment window you will see a new button at the upper right that looks like this Select a group to edit Now the settings you created are essentially the default settings for the assignment but if you wish you can alter these settings for one or more of your groups So for example let s say you want to have some of your students do self assessment in both the Create and Assess Phase but others only do it in the Assess Phase perhaps as part of a research 59 project Now you can set up your assignment to use self assessment in both the Create and Assess Phase but you can now choose a specific group from the pull down and turn the self assess
72. o know student e mail addresses they make great usernames and yes you can choose map the same column to BOTH username and e mail address Otherwise if one of your columns includes an LMS username for each student that also would make a good username choice I typically choose the LMS username column for Username and then choose the column with student numbers as the initial Password I find that easy to communicate to students and of course they can reset their password as soon as they log in You can also have student number also a unique identifier as BOTH Username and initial password Finally if you like you can generate your own column and append it to the CSV file before importing then you can specify that column as your Username and or Password Note that as you choose columns the Example portion of the window populates with the first students student information to give you a clear sense of the mapping your are specifying Add Students Step 1 Enter User Manually Import User List CSV File Your CSV Column Example First Name required First Name Joseph Last Name Last Name Humphreys Username required UToriD jhumpheys Password required Student Number 11223344 Email e mail jh test com Student ID Student Number 11223344 Once you are happy with the mapping you have specified click on the green lt VERIFY USER S gt button Doing so will result in the table und
73. o translate this vague feeling of quality into a mark rating for each peer Then peer by peer add to your mark rating in two ways First highlight something this student is already doing well something you think they should continue to do in future work Second of all the ways a peers work could be improved try 42 to hone in on the one thing that you think could result in the biggest improvement in quality and explain that thing to your peer as clearly and constructively as possible After you assess your peers you will then be asked to assess your own work Read the question given to you at that point and provide your rating Notice once again how this Instruction amp Tips differs from the overarching assignment It 1s phase specific instructions If the students need to be reminded of the overarching assignment they can click on the green Assignment button at any time Once you have written your Instructions and Tips you now have several other decisions to make Scroll the left side of the screen down to see the pull down menus and text boxes related to these decisions The first is a parameter setting related to the number of peers which you specify by clicking on the arrow head and choosing the appropriate number from the pull down menu NUMBER OF PEER ASSESSORS PEER ANONYMITY DURING ASSESSMENT oon On WH F amp F WN SF OH J TYPE OF ASSESSMENT This number actually is simultaneously setting two
74. ocused on the Create Phase Once you have written your Instructions amp Tips scroll down to see the other things you can choose or activate in this phase The first of these is entitled STUDENT SUBMISSION TYPE and it is a pull down menu that allows you to specify what it is you want your students to submit STUDENT SUBMISSION TYPE Written Assignment Type or copy amp paste into a text editor 4 i Il berec Written Assignment Type or copy amp paste into a text editor Visual Assignment Upload a picture Audio Assignment Upload a sound file Video Assignment Upload a video using YouTube ENABLE SELF ASSESSMENT Other Assignment Attach any other file types i77 7 Wiki Assignment Convert Wiki markup to HTML and back peerScholar was originally created as a tool for supporting writing but it is not constrained to written submissions If you prefer you can ask your students to submit an image a file an audio file or even a video file Again the default of Written Assignment is most common but we leave it to your imagination Your final option for the Create Phase is whether you want to enable self assessment at the end of this phase If you turn self assessment on then after students submit their composition they will be asked to 40 perform some sort of assessment of that composition The textbox under the title Self Assessment Question allows you to specify exactly how or what you want them
75. ool Library The Science of Natural Disasters Cogneeto SysAdmin Students write a magazine article about the causes and effects of a recent natural disaster Their articles should be supported by research and include diagrams or illustrations to help their reader understand the science behind the natural disaster Subject Geography Grade Level 7 Library Public Library One Minute in Canadian History Cannaacta Cue Admin 65 As the library continues to grow this initial page becomes less useful as will show you the first few of countless available assignments What is most important initially is to use the search functionality available above the list to zero in on the level and subject matter you are interested So let s say you are interested in assignments related to your Grade 10 History course if you select History from the Subject drop down menu and 10 from the Grade Level drop down menu you then get the following more useful listing Manage Li brary Assig nments SSs PUBLIC LIBRARY i SCHOOL LIBRARY amp MY LIBRARY ALL LIBRARIES Subject History Grade Level 10 ASSIGNMENTS 3 Canada s Military Then and Now Cogneeto SysAdmin Students research and write an essay that compares the role of Canada s military during the Second World War and ina O modern conflict Their essays should include at least three different points of comparison and a conclusion that shows how Canada s m History 10 Public Library Making
76. ou to add users one at a time Please fill out the fields below and then click on the Verify User s button The result of this check with then be displayed in Step 2 and you will then be able to fix any verification issues Enter Import more user s and Finish amp Add User s to the system Role Required Teaching Assistant Search Users Name Required Username Required Password 7 e Show a list of usernames and passwords for printing _ Email username and password to users if email was Auto Generate provided mam Email Enter Import Additonal User s or piia maz Finish 8 40 Users im 8 Verify User s CANCEL Continue adding individual students in this way until all students have been added and verified under Step 2 Then click on the green Done button located at the bottom of the Step 2 portion of the window This will result in a list of the added students along with their usernames and passwords just as you saw when entering students You can print out this list if you d like a record of the student information 29 Scholar Chapter 3 Creating an Assignment We designed peerScholar to be easy to use while also allowing educators to flexibly create assignments with the settings and process that best suits their educational goals This chapter walks you through the process of setting up whatever kind of assignment you prefer At times I will go a little beyo
77. r Move the mouse over the grade you wish to edit When you do a green EDIT GRADE button will appear When you click on that button you will see something that looks like Evaluation Phase s Profile a Canadian Politician ot 4 Evaluate lt B Student bstudent Last login 2013 11 01 16 36 16 TEACHER S COMMENT S TEACHER S GRADE 5 8 3 Change 2 outof4 Avg Peer Rating You can click on various components of this interface to get detailed information both about this students behavior in the course of the assignment and also the peers reaction to their work Should you decide that you do wish to alter the mark after reviewing the work then simply click on the Change arrow that is right under the displayed grade When you do an edit box will open lt B Student bstudent Last login 2013 11 01 16 36 16 sw 58 3 Change Simply select the grade in the edit box change it to a grade you feel 1s appropriate then click the SAVE box You can then close the edit box by clicking on the X at the bottom right of the box 76 When you are finished review and revising grades then click the X at the top right of the Evaluation Phase box to return back to the Assignment Bar with the student progress table open below it If you are satisfied with the grades toggle the SHOW MARKS switch to on and students will be able to see their grades as well as all the details associated with the
78. r Brainiac Logout DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER MyFirstClass ASSIGNMENTS 0 STUDENTS amp GRADES 2 REPORTS 32 The window that then appears is the primary interface for creating assignments It s important that you come to know it well so I want to begin by slowly walking you through it The title of your assignment 1s written along the top you can modify that at any time Most of the action will happen below that line and one can think of that area 1s being composed of two parts The larger box to the left is the place where we will be specifying parameters and making decisions The list of items in the right margin specifies what component of the assignment we are modifying and it is organized in a very specific way Assignment Title My First Assignment Assignment amp Dates ZA Assignment amp Dates ASSIGNMENT amp MEDIA Specify your specific assignment to your students in the text box below If you would like to include media with 0 Create your assignment click on the appropriate icon to add either a picture video sound file or other file type You can also choose a graphic organizer and a rubric by clicking on the appropriate icon then choosing from the provided sets Ea Assess Add Media B 4 ADD GRAPHIC ORGANIZER ADD RUBRIC Reflect Revise E Source ont lt ze Style 2 t Grading Options a Bm AL e Asa O S B B 7 Ux XA A a FEE B222 S Advanced Options Library As
79. se a prompt that reads something like You ve just assessed the work of your peers Now look at your own work again and think about it like you just thought about the work of your peers What mark or rating do you think it deserves 3 4 Setting Up the Revise Reflect Phase In the reflect revise phase students see and assess the feedback that peers have associated with their work receptive communication critical thinking and in addition they can be asked to revise their work in light of those comments expressive communication They can also be asked to reflect on the some question that the educator highlights such as providing justifications for the revisions they did and didn t make and they can be asked to self assess in a manner that encourages them to reflect on their learning experience self reflection 47 As was true of the previous phases the first task to perform when setting up the Revise Reflect Phase is to provide specific Instructions amp Tips for this phase I would typically tell my students something along the following lines In this phase you will see the comments and ratings that your peers have associated with your work Look at this feedback one peer at a time think deeply about what they said and decide how useful you feel their feedback is That is don t assume what they are telling you is useful but rather assess whether or not it is useful and then communicate your assessment by categor
80. se will be amplified through the remainder of the assignment process Most instructors include some form of evaluation rubric with their assignment As will become important evaluation and the critical thinking skills associated with it are central to peerScholar assignments so providing a good sense of how assignments will be evaluated right from the start sets the stage well for the remainder of the assignment Thus students are given the assignment and the rubric and are asked to submit their assignment via peerScholar by a specified due date and time Optionally they can also be asked to self assess their submission at this or in any of the subsequent phases self reflection The Assess Phase At some point after the assignments have been submitted the assess phase 1s opened When students log in to the assess phase they are presented with an instructor specified subset of 10 randomly selected and anonymously presented peers submissions Their primary task is to evaluate these submissions in a manner the provides each peer with a sense of the quality of their work critical thought effective communication and at least one well presented idea about how that work could be improved creative thought effective communication As they work through these pieces they must contrast and compare to ascertain quality and their own submission is available to them through this process Thus critical thought and self reflective tho
81. seemed counterproductive to put a lot of time energy and resources cleaning up parts of the system then will soon disappear completely We hope you will tolerate this short term inelegance with our apologies 2 1 Creating Classes Instructors log in to peerScholar by entering their username and password as www peerScholar ca When they log in they will first come to a Dashboard that displays announcements they have made to their classes and a calendar showing upcoming peerScholar deadlines This page can be returned to at any time by clicking on the Dashboard tab If an educator has not yet set up any classes then they will see a grey button labeled lt ADD A CLASS gt just to the right of the Dashboard tab When this button is clicked the user is prompted to enter a name for their class and to then click the lt Create gt button 16 DASHBOARD ADD A CLASS 44 Anno Once entered that name then becomes a tab displayed just to the right of the Dashboard tab pasmeoaro ane Multiple classes can be created in this manner with each new created class resulting in another class tab Eventually a given educator will have one tab for each class in which they are using peerScholar Wed 3 28 PM C Messages DASHBOARD MYFIRSTCLASS ANOTHERCLASS ANDANOTHER ed Announcements 0 When any of these class tabs is clicked on it opens up the class window with the Assignment tab foregrounded and the
82. signment Setting PREVIEW SAVE amp FINISH CANCEL DATE amp TIME This is where you specify when you want the different phases of your assignment to open and close You ca This is where you specify when you want the different ph f your ignment to open and cl y n specify precise dates and times for each phase and you can choose to leave spaces between the phases or begin one just after the previous one is complete CREATE Open Not Yet Selected Close Allow Late Submission A ASSESS Open Close i REFLECT REVISE Open Close CHO Allow Late Submission 33 So let s focus in on that right margin It is essentially split into four sections as suggested by the horizontal lines The first section includes only the Assignment amp Dates link is what we will use to define the overall assignment The second section includes the Create Assess and Reflect Revise links and these will be used to define the student experience supported by the assignment The third section includes the Grading Options and Advanced Options links and this section relates to how we want to administer the assignment behind the scenes Finally the fourth section includes the Preview Save Save and Finish and Cancel buttons that will allow us to see the effects of our changes save our changes or quit making changes A Assignment amp Dates L Create a Assess Reflect
83. some highlights 77 e By clicking on the orange arrows on either side of the student name or number you can move forward or backward in the student list e Clicking the TEACHER S GRADE button will show you the criteria you set up in the Grading Options providing an easy location for you to input your grade for each criterion When you save the grades for the specific criteria those component grades will then feed into the automatic generation of a final mark e Clicking the TEACHER S COMMENTS button opens up a textbox where the marker can provide comments to accompany the numeric grades e In the lower portion of this interface are bars related to each of the three phases By clicking on any of these bars you will gain access to all of the details relating to the student s behavior in that phase The specifics of what you will see depend on the options that were set when the assignment was created Thus the general notion is that the grader will use the interface to support their grading of whatever criteria they have specified For example if one component of the grade was the quality of comments given to peers a grader could click on the Assess Phase Bar then on the Feedback to peers tab which opens up a display with tabs for each peer and which displays the comments the student gave that peer the rating they provided and the usefulness of those comments as perceived by the student who received
84. ss is preferred then when the Revise Resubmit switch is set to ON students will be shown their draft composition and given the opportunity to revise it The assumption of the full formative process is that an educator or team member will provide the final grade a grade that can be based on the draft the final composition the quality of the comments given to peers and the appropriateness of the revision I will return to this possibility when discussing the Grading Options but suffice it to say that when the resources are available to allow use of the full formative model the act of grading the process as well as the product allows the educator to emphasize the primary skills peerScholar is intended to develop Moving down the interface your next decision 1s whether you want students to assess the feedback provided by their peers ASSESS THE FEEDBACK CH The default is set to ON which means that below each set of peer ratings and comments there will be a pull down menu that students will use to categorize a given set of feedback as either not useful useful or very useful This is essentially asking students the think critically about feedback receptive communication relating to potential improvements to their work self reflection Thus it brings together 3 of the cognitive skills related to our most desired learning objectives and thus having this set to ON seems to make a lot of sense However in contexts where one is worried a
85. ssments you peers associated with your work Be sure to consult the rubric carefully when creating your analysis because this is the basis upon which you will both assess your peers and be assessed by them Note that there is no need to get into details about exactly what the students is expected to do within each phase there will be an opportunity to do that in the sections that follow The only remaining thing to do in the Assignment amp Dates section 1s to specify the open and closing dates and times for the various phases of your assignment By scrolling down within the box to the left you will see the area where this is done Using a calendar tool and drop down time choices you specify two dates and times for each phase when you want that phase to become available and when you want it to close 37 DATE amp TIME A CREATE Open 2 October 2013 12 05 am Close 4 October 2013 11 55 pm Allow Late Submission on _ EA ASSESS Open 7 October 2013 12 05 am Close 9 October 2013 11 55 pm REFLECT REVISE Open Not Yet Selected a Close Allow Lama Oct 2013 gt Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Ww u 2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 wered by Pee 27 28 29 30 31 All rights reserved Note that you also can choose to allow late submissions for the Create and Revise Reflect phases but NOT for the Assess Phase The basic algorithm underlying peerScholar requires that once the Reflect
86. ted let me also mention two further points First if you prefer to watch videos rather than read I have also created a set of videos that describe peerScholar in a manner that directly parallels this manual These videos can be found at www peerScholar com and I will also begin each section with a URL specifically for the video related to that section Second I have been told that my style of writing and speaking is somewhat unconventional it s been call informal folky honest and real To me it s just me and I really know of no other way to communicate So my hope is that you might appreciate this style and that it might make this manual a little less dry than the typical software manual OK on with the manual Thank you again and let s get at it Sincerely Steve for the entire peerScholar team Scholar Chapter 1 Setting the Stage This chapter is intended to introduce you to this manual and to peerScholar It presents the context purpose and structure underlying the remainder of this manual and critically it also provides the larger theoretical framework that guided the creation and that should also guide the use of peerScholar I know some of you though are eager to play If that s you please feel free to jump straight to Chapter 2 which is all about getting started in peerScholar 1 1 Introduction to this Manual peerScholar is a tool that was created to support a painless transformation of
87. th then be displayed in Step 2 and you will then be able to fix any verification issues Enter Import more user s and Finish amp Add User s to the system No users verified Role Required Student CSV Text Required Choose File No file chosen ignore top title row Course S AnotherClass gt Import CANCEL The form asks you to first specify the role for the individuals you will be adding When adding a student list the default student role will suffice so no change is needed Just below that is where you tell peerScholar where you classlist file is Simply click on the lt Browse gt button and locate and select your file Just below that the form asks you whether to Ignore top title row of the CSV Again usually you do want to ignore this top row as it contains labels and not real student information so then you simply check that box Finally it asks you to specify which of your courses this is a classlist for It will default to the course you came into this window from and that s usually the one you want But if you want to batch upload different students lists for different courses one at a time you can do ZL that by simply repeating the process described in this section choosing the appropriate class and classlist each time through When you have all that information specified click on the green lt gt IMPORT gt button at the bottom of the Step portion of
88. the file they wish to attach amp Upload Images x image 779 jpg 64 45 KB B FINISH Above and to the right of the text box are two other optional attachments labeled Add Graphic Organizer and Add Rubric respectively Graphic organizers are planning sheets the students can use to help the plan out their assignment before actually beginning it and peerScholar comes preloaded with a large number that can be 35 browsed through and chose by clicking on the Add Graphic Organizer button Add a Graphic Organizer x Select a Graphic Organizer Template Main Idea Support rganizer Upload a Graphic Organizer Of all these potential additions to the assignment text the Add Rubric is likely the most important for a peerScholar assignment Given that students are going to be assessing one another and then reflecting on the assessments peers attached to their work it is important that the basis of all assessments be made clear and there 1s no better place to do that than at the outset of the assignment Some educators like very specific rubrics while others prefer rubrics that intentionally leave more room for interpretation In addition the details of a rubric often depend on the specific assignment students are being asked to do So unlike the graphic organizers there is not a set of pre created rubrics that one can just choose Rather we suggest that the educator create their own rubric which is simp
89. them as shown here 78 Avg Usefulness 1 4 eedb f Feedback to peers eer eer eer eer eer Overall Comments 1 Please comment on one thing done well in this assignment The idea was well expanded on and in depth 2 Please comment on one thing that could be improved in this assignment The idea will not work People have always been educating others on the cons of gangs yet they still form Gangs are about s teem and pride Simply telling people that it s bad will not end gang violence Ratings 1 Overall Rating 123 6789 POOR O OOO EXCELLENT Feedback Useful So a grader can toggle through the peer tabs and quickly get a rich sense of the comments this student provided and their peers reaction to those comments Similarly the grader can access any information they might need to provide a rich and useful evaluation that will help their students understand what they are already doing well and how they can improve their work further Once the grader has provided all ratings and comments for all students then they are done Note that if an instructor has used the ADD TEAM MEMBERS to identify team members then used the ADVANCED OPTIONS to create groups and identify team members with groups then when the team members log in upon completion of the assignment they can grade just as described above They will only see those students who they were assigned to though so if you have a number of te
90. ught come together as students not only see how their work compares to that of their peers but also get clear ideas about those aspects that distinguish higher quality work Instructors have a lot of freedom with respect to determining how students provide feedback to their peers One strong suggestion though is that they be asked to provide at least one written comment that is aimed at giving each peer specific and rich advice about at least one thing they could do to make their work better This sort of feedback exercises critical thought of all the possible problems with this piece what 1s the largest problem critical thought OK now that I know the problem how do I think it would best be remedied and expressive communication now I must express my suggested improvement in a way my peer understands and values In addition it also enhances the general feeling of community in a classroom as students are not helping each other improve their work Again students can be asked to self assess self reflection their work after having just assessed the work of their peers There is a point here worthy of emphasis Yes students will get a grade and various forms of feedback within peerScholar just as they do in other assignment contexts However there 1s something much more palpable much more personally about seeing your own work in the context of peer work especially in an evaluative situation Getting a C is one thing clearly seeing th
91. up Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 AUTO GENERATE MANUALLY CREATE CANCEL From here you can specify exactly how many students you want in your groups It shows three groups here because I had specified 3 groups from the pull down menu Generally it is much easier to choose Equal and allow peerScholar to assign your students to groups for you When I do that with my very large class I then see the following interface which I have purposefully shrunk to the point where individual names are unreadable The critical bits though are really three sections On the left you see a Student List over a Team Member List and on the right you see your three or however many you asked for groups LOAD EXISTING GROUPS Feedback Type Choose how the system will Random students give feedback to peers from ANY group SAVE GROUPS Student List Group 1 cl Il Group 2 cl Il Group 3 Cl Il Lingyu Bai Victoria Dukosk x F hta Bare x Perry Rhod x Sandra Szabunie x Raymond Raheem x Nabiha Fatima N x Abbygale Araos x Vithien Nguy x Cynthia Yang x Zeba Sadia Sidd x Jing Li x Iram Sobia Kh x Kevin Bryan Far x Kasturi Rangara x Brian Longm x Walid Ali x Laxitha Kathirg x Jessica Thomas x Michael Bakshy x Chloe Patricia x SeJ m x Hong Jia He x Alisha Bhoj x Nadine E x Jonathan Tham x Amanda Paul x Jacqueline S K Angeline Ratnar x dmira Sh x Sarah Joh x Team Member List Vincent Law x Jasmine James x Howard Doug x Adam
92. ups AUTO GENERATE MANUALLY CREATE CANCEL Notice the Number of groups pulldown arrow The options that are provided to you will depend on the number of students in your class and the number of peers that each student will assess as specified previously when setting up the Assess Phase Hopefully the number of groups you want is possible given these constraints and 1f so click on that number Once you do that you then click either on Auto Generate or Manually Create If you choose Auto Generate then peerScholar will randomly assign your students to the groups if you choose Manually Create you define the groups by dragging student names into each group from a classlist Obviously the Auto Generate works well for large or very large classes and the Manually Create option is more appropriate when you want tight control over which students are in which groups If you do choose Auto Generate you will then see a pop up that allows you to specify either an equal or unequal number of students in each group Create groups for assignment Equal of students per group Unequal of students per group AUTO GENERATE MANUALLY CREATE CANCEL If you choose Equal it will try to divide your class into the number of groups you specified as equally as possible If you choose Unequal you will be further prompted as follows 56 Create groups for assignment Enter the number of students for each gro
93. urse and add students The third chapter is all about setting up an assignment walking you through the features and explaining the 1 2 various assignments that can be created when these features are used in certain combinations Finally the fourth chapter focuses on managing an ongoing assignment and then generating or exporting data once an assignment is complete Structurally the organization of this manual mirrors that of the video based course available at www peerScholar com As such one highly effective manner of learning peerScholar is to first read a section of this manual and then to view the associated video to both review the material and see it play out within the program The Pedegogical Basis of peerScholar Before I set up the Advanced Learning Technology lab at the University of Toronto most of my research focused on the basic processes and structures of human memory In many ways the ALT lab is an applied extension of much of what I had learned as a student and researchers of memory One specific fact is highly relevant to peerScholar and the role it can play with respect to enhancing education That fact is this although we speak of memory as though it were a single system humans have different systems for acquiring information versus acquiring skills and those systems require very different learning experiences to function effectively Information such as the core content or most courses can be effectively
94. use that library assignment with a minimum of editing as little as specifying dates But before describing the process of using library assignments allow me to describe the promise of where this library is going Being able to choose an assignment based on level and area 1s all well and good but it would much better if an educator could see exactly what learning outcomes an assignment targeted what other educators who used the assignment thought of it and what students who performed the assignments thought of it Then it would be possible to select say a Grade 10 History assignment that exercised Creative Thought that educators other that the creator felt produced a great educational experience and that students found engaging and fun By relying our crowd sourcing then our ultimate goal is an 1Tunes like library that contains assignments that have been rated by educators and students alike in terms that are relevant to the educational experience We re not there yet but will be very soon OK promises aside for now here is the current reality and process To use a library assignment one begins as they did when creating an assignment from scratch That is you first go to the relevant course tab and will see one of two things If you have already created any sort of assignment for that course you will see something like Thu 10 17 AM Messages Mana MyFirstClass ASSIGNMENTS 1 STUDENTS amp GRADES 2 REPORTS Filter Show All

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