I hope I am not posting in an inappropriate forum. I'm trying to find out if anyone has developed any tools for Moodle for Peer Grading. I've come across a particular tool through this blog:
http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/peer-grading-in-online-classes-does-it-work/
but I feel that I need a tool that works from within Moodle.
Does anyone know of any development work in this area?
Brian
The search box on this forum or google.com may help. I particularly recommend
Why not just use the workshop module? http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Workshop_module
Another possible way to go for simpler applications than the Workshop is the database module where it is possible to allow ratings of entries by peers. This is further enhanced in the Dataform where it is possible to sort and search by ratings. It will be even further enhanced in the Dataform by allowing multiple rating criteria (a sort of rubrics).
Here's an illustration of a simple rating application with the Dataform. The entries were added by the instructor so it's not quite peer rating, but it would work in a similar way if the entries were added by the students. Currently it's only one rating criterion per entry. It has just been uploaded, so it remains to see how engaging it can be.
The activity view displays all the entries for rating (and comments).
The 3 top rated philosophers (entries) in descending order are displayed in a block on the course main page:
Thanks for the suggestions on Peer Grading, folks. I have to be honest and let you know that my motives are "not pure". I'm not really interested in this as a learning method, where the students benefit from analysing their peers work. I'm interested in it purely from the point of view of reducing lecturer workload in marking assignments in classes with large enrollment levels. To do this I would imagine that the system needs to use some sort of algorithm to calibrate the level of marking of the students including possibly the ability of the lecturer to influence that calibration by sampling some assignments. I would imagine that this could be tricky and would need specialised software.
In the same way that I would not expect Moodle to necessarily contain a plagiarism detection system, my guess is that this might be best done outside Moodle and integrated in some way.
I'll check out the suggestions you have given me, but if anyone has any further suggestions, or even opinions on this issue, I'd love to hear more on it.
Thanks,
Brian
I would definintely investigate the workshop module based on your previous comments.
Hi Brian,
In my opinion, the peer review Assignment module plugin is definitely my favourite, and easier and more practical to use than the Workshop module. It's one of the many reasons I'm still using Moodle 1.9 for most of my needs.
On the laziness side of things ;) I think it can reduce your workload in that respect since peer grading and feedback tends to be fairly comparable with teachers' in the research that I've read and from personal experience. However, learners need a fair amount of guidance in the beginning to help them to develop their analytical and critical thinking skills, and for each assignment, I recommend getting the learners themselves to define the marking rubric that they're going to use. This helps them to understand the task/assigment objectives better and have a clearer idea of what makes a good/successful outcome, before they even attempt the task/assignment (rather than trying to second-guess you from the grades and feedback you give). They'll need a strong context and more than likely some examples of similar (but not too similar) tasks/assignment outcomes to look at so that they can co-construct their marking rubrics.
I think it's actually a lot more work initially but it pays dividends in cultivating learner autonomy and higher order thinking skills. Only after they've got the hang of peer review, can you withdraw the instructional scaffolding, and your workload will lighten up. How long this will take will depend on the cognitive demand of the tasks/assignments and the current abilities of your learners.
I hope this helps!