General developer forum

Hi Iain,

I suggest you check out the 'Database' module. This activity is very flexible and can be setup for groups. It doesn't have the stepwise approach you get with Workshop.

Cheers, Chad.

Hello Iain,

"I am interested in a form of online support for student peer review of individual contribution to a group task by other members of the group."

I think I am looking for a very similar ‘feature’.

I administer a course in which 250 students in groups of 3 (so 84 groups) create ‘compositions’ using the moodle Wiki module. A teacher gives grades and feedback for these compositions via the standard ‘Assignments-offline activity” module. Students in the same group get the same grade and feedback. The only exception to this is if students in a group report that one of their members did not make any contribution. If this is confirmed, the non-contributing student gets a zero.

Although students appreciate this collaborative work, there is some concern that ‘free-riders’ and minimally contributing students are being unfairly rewarded.

A possible solution to this problem is to allow groups members to evaluate each other’s contribution.

Certainly, there are ‘peer review’ modules already out there, and modules that could be used for peer review:

• The standard Workshop module (now significantly improved in version 2)
• The standard Database module
• The contributed Questionnaire or Feedback modules
• The contributed Peer review assignment type (and here)

The problem with these existing ‘peer review’ solutions is that they require the students to submit something. e.g. with the Workshop module, if students don’t upload / submit something, they can’t be evaluated, The same with the Database module solution. With the questionnaire and Feedback modules, the teacher has to list all of the students in the course, and then ‘trust’ the students to evaluate only those students who were in their group. Also, it is not possible for this evaluation of peers in a questionnaire or feedback activity (a grade) to be carried over to the gradebook.

Another issue with the existing solutions is that they are designed for evaluation of the quality of content. What I (and I think Iain) are after is something that will allow students to evaluate the level of contribution made to a group task by individual group members (i.e. quality of contribution).

At its simplest, students would be asked to evaluate the contribution of their group members (and perhaps themselves too) by checking one of the following or similar statements about each student:

• This student made no contribution
• This student made a minimal contribution (less than the other two)
• This students did as much as the other group members
• This student did more that the other group members

The wording and number of statements would be set up by the teacher, who would also assign a numerical value to each statement. For example, 0% for "no contribution", and 130% for "contributing more than the others". This grade could be used in one of two ways:

1. This “raw” grade could be recorded into the grade book and used to adjust another grade in the gradebook using a simple equation: e.g. if group X was given 60% for their composition, but student B was judged by her group members to have contributed more that the other group members, she would get an adjusted score of 78% (60 x 130%).
2. Alternatively, the calculation could be done within this ‘module’, so that students accessing this activity after the evaluation process would see their ‘average’ contribution score and the adjusted score of the group task.

So is there already a way to do this, either with standard or contributed modules?

Or, perhaps it might be possible to adjust an existing module; e.g. the “Peer review assignment type” could be changed to allow students to evaluate ‘offline’ activities, and so students would not be required to upload something before evaluating other students or being evaluated.

Or, is there a need for a new feature that will:

1. allow students to evaluate the level of contribution to group tasks by other group members
2. not require submission or uploading in order to evaluate or be evaluated
3. support the groups and groupings feature so that students will be automatically faced with only their group members to evaluate
4. report the ‘average’ (or perhaps max) contribution grade to the gradebook.
5. make it possible to give a grade to students who evaluate other students' contributions (i.e. an incentive for doing this evaluation task)

Any ideas or suggestions will be most welcome.