Peer assessment for massive open online courses (MOOCs)

Abstract

The teach-learn-assess cycle in education is broken in a typical massive open online course (MOOC). Without formative assessment and feedback, MOOCs amount to information dump or broadcasting shows, not educational experiences. A number of remedies have been attempted to bring formative assessment back into MOOCs, each with its own limits and problems. The most widely applicable approach for all MOOCs to date is to use peer assessment to provide the necessary feedback. However, unmoderated peer assessment results suffer from a lack of credibility. Several methods are available today to improve on the accuracy of peer assessment results. Some combination of these methods may be necessary to make peer assessment results sufficiently accurate to be useful for formative assessment. Such results can also help to facilitate peer learning, online discussion forums, and may possibly augment summative evaluation for credentialing.

Types of Participant Behavior in a Massive Open Online Course

“…With the massive number of participants in a course, conducting assessments by the instructors is impossible (Glance et al, 2013;Sandeen, 2013;Suen, 2014) and different models of assessments are evolving, including: automated quizzes, peer assessments, and self-assessments. Nevertheless, studies indicated that with free and easy registration for MOOCs, the courses include a large number of participants who may not have any interest in completing the assessments (Breslow et al, 2013;Ho et al, 2014).…”

ComPAIR: A New Online Tool Using Adaptive Comparative Judgement to Support Learning with Peer Feedback

“…The value of using rubrics to support peer feedback has been shown previously (cf. Suen 2014). Also in our case, a combination of multiple criteria or rubrics along with significantly weighting the feedback were demonstrated to help circumvent this frustration.…”

Design of a pedagogical model to promote knowledge generation in virtual communities

“…From a Constructivist perspective, when designing a MOOC it is recommended to include peer-to-peer assessment strategies in order to encourage learning, collaboration and participation in the community (Suen, 2014). At the end of each test or activity, opening a discussion group about that task in particular allows participants to share similar difficulties.…”

“…1 simple and easy to understand for students 2 efficient in execution without occupying much time 3 limited in that each student rater is asked to rate no more than a handful of other students' assignments (Suen, 2014).…”