Would you please mark my text for me Would you please mark my text for me? Improving students’ writing and collaborative skills with the help of the Peer Assessment tool on Blackboard Sabrina Wagner

Overview The Context The Project Peer Assessment on Blackboard The Results Conclusions and Outlook

The Context 2014-15 2 Intermediate Groups (B1), about 30 students Mixed group of students ‘Weak’ cohort (based on exam results semester 1) Goethe-Zertifikat B1 to pass after Semester 2

The Project Students were given writing tasks from model Goethe exams on a weekly basis Students would write their texts and then upload them onto Peer Assessment on Blackboard The week after, every student was given another student’s work to peer assess on Blackboard The tutor also marked the texts so that students could compare Formative assessment

Peer Assessment The tool sounded more straight-forward to use than Turnitin No one had ever used it (including e-learning) Blackboard update around Easter new features introduced the data was lost

Results On average, about 10 students participated regularly Writing improved considerably over the semester, all of the students passed the Goethe exam Increased student awareness of the marking criteria used for this exam Students preferred writing over evaluating Students were mostly too lenient in their evaluation Students gave the tutor’s marks more credibility

Conclusions and Outlook Peer Assessment would work best when ALL the students enrolled on the course participate in the exercise Tutor must be able to see students’ view on Blackboard, otherwise it’s a guessing game Tutor can download the students’ submissions as html files Extra work for the tutor Peer Assessment again? Turnitin? Other? Peer Assessment across different levels?