Peer evaluation
For a number of years now, I've been using the moodle platform for my university courses, because not only does it save me having to print out too many paper documents, and enables absent students to keep abreast of the content of a session, but I can also use applications such as "l'atelier", which enables students to evaluate each other. This is known as "peer assessment".
The exams take place in two stages. A first session in which students analyze and compare several documents from different media sources on an identical theme. From this analysis, they are asked to produce a one- to two-page summary, which they upload to the platform.
The following session, the students are assigned papers to correct, and via an evaluation form I've prepared in advance, they change hats and become teachers!
Not only are they composing an exam to mark the end of a whole course, but they are also distancing themselves and taking responsibility for the assessment. I like this way of doing things, because in "traditional" times, when you mark a subject, the students tend not to pay much attention and are only interested in their mark!
The machine replaces the human being... and his critical mind?
So I put together a documentary file of different media, but with the same theme and preferably with common points (links of meaning, context, authors, etc.).
The students are asked to :
- analyze the document "visually" and materially, its presentation, formatting, possible illustrations, reading contract, legitimacy of the author(s), source;
- outline the content;
- identify forms of discourse.
I do this because first-year students often have the "academic bias" of limiting themselves to the content without distancing themselves from it. A second "school bias" I've observed is the way students seem ready to accept any content, as long as it's transmitted by a "professorial authority". Unwittingly, I verified this hypothesis during an exercise of the same type as the one mentioned above, involving documentary analysis.
A few years ago, I devised an exam subject on the theme of music in Africa. The idea came to me when a musician friend showed me an old "encyclopedia of African civilization" he'd found at a garage sale. He showed it to me, so shocked was he by the ethnocentric statements it contained.
So I photocopied an article from this encyclopedia: the "music" entry, which I inserted in a folder with another, much more recent article from a popular science magazine (Pour la Science) written by an ethnomusicologist who uses mathematics to understand Central African music.
In the first year of using the file, I was somewhat surprised by the results: a large minority of students (3rd year undergraduates) didn't perceive a hint of ethnocentricity in the 68 article! And yet, they could read sentences like: "Whatever faults we attribute to blacks (...)".
So I repeated the experiment a few years later with first-year students at another university. Same results!
The only explanation that seemed plausible to me - my students can't all be "racists" - was a form of submission to authority, especially pedagogical authority. It's not necessarily reassuring, but it's the most likely explanation I've found so far.
Since then, the file on music in Africa, which I've enriched with a YouTube video by ethnomusicologist Marc Chemillier, has served as a "model training subject" in preparation for the exam.
The teacher's posture, shall we talk about it?
In the case of peer correction on moodle, students get a double grading: as a student and as a corrector. And it works, provided that the corrections are anonymous. With a platform like moodle, this is perfectly feasible. All you have to do is go to the "roles" settings and adjust the rights by user type.
More than a technical adjustment, peer assessment requires a different posture, for students and teachers alike.
I don't know about you, but here in France, university students ask permission to go to the bathroom. Personally, I wonder... They could just say they're going out, couldn't they? The teaching posture is different, it's not the same job, but it's work!
The bulk of the work lies in preparation, and can give the impression that "the students do everything, the teacher does nothing". To borrow a phrase from Jean-Charles Cailliez's"inverted classroom". And yet, everything is done upstream, from the subject to the answer sheet: planning the subjects, their correction, a suitable room and back-up computers. I was even able to do it remotely during the Covid era!
The most stressful thing for me as a Generation Xer is the technological "practice". For example, this year I had prepared everything and I thought I'd do the answer key and its form while the students were composing on their "copies".
Except that the platform had "decided" to "bellow", preventing me from accessing the form! Fortunately, the students were able to do their share of the work without any problems. I then had to spend an hour on the phone with the software engineer to rectify the programming, only to realize that we often don't know why it doesn't work. And when it does work, you're so happy that you stop trying to understand it...
"Theory is when you know everything and nothing works. Practice is when everything works and nobody knows why" Albert Einstein
Feedback
I drew on the work of Jean-Charles Cailliez to get feedback from the students. At the end, I simply asked them to take a piece of paper and indicate one positive and one negative point, without specifying their name.
As I'd expected, they found marking the papers tedious.
They liked the "doing things differently" aspect and often commented on it, as well as the different ways of doing things, the different ideas and layouts. It also makes them aware of their mistakes.
Grading is a complex activity, not as obvious as it might seem, and one that makes us ask a lot of questions. Evaluating is above all "repetitive, always looking for the same elements".
"very good experience for a change. However, the evaluator method was not very stimulating in my opinion, perhaps too much to correct". - Licence1 student
They had 5 papers to correct!
So, in the situation of self-assessment, students are in a "real" assessment situation that can be described as a"real pedagogical activity". It changes their posture as students, making them more active and participative in their learning.
Peer assessment also brings about a change in the teacher's posture, between confidence and letting go, and, icing on the cake, a considerable easing of the chore of copying! Anyone involved in teaching knows what I'm talking about! Now the students know...
I can already hear the reactions of colleagues. On Moodle, all you have to do is look at the results and spot any "abnormalities", then check them. And if you really want to correct them yourself, don't worry, the platform allows it!
Photo credit: rulenumberone2 on visualHunt.com
Sources
L'hadi Bouzidi, Alain Jaillet (2007) "L'évaluation par les pairs pourra-t-elle faire de l'examen une vraie activité pédagogique" EIAM https://hal.science/hal-00161484v1/document
Burguete, E., Picard, N., Andrieux, N., Fourcade, F., & Perrochon, A. (2020). Remote peer
les pairs à distance lors d'un enseignement de lecture critique d'articles pour des étudiants paramédicaux. Evaluate.
Journal international de recherche en éducation et formation, Numéro Hors-série, 1, 41-51
https://www.academia.edu/109529021/%C3%89valuation_Par_Les_Pairs_%C3%80_Distance_Lors_D_Un_Enseignement_De_Lecture_Critique_D_Articles_Pour_Des_%C3%89tudiants_Param%C3%A9dicaux?uc-sb-sw=113799232
Jean Charles Caillliez (2016) "La classe renversée" TedX Lille
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMAONv3BPhs
Marc Chemillier (2005) "Musique et rythme en Afrique centrale" Pour la science dossier "Mathématiques exotiques" April-June 2005. available online https://www.pourlascience.fr/sd/histoire-sciences/musique-et-rythmes-en-afrique-centrale-5708.php
Georges Balandier, dir. (1968) Dictionnaire des civilisations africaines Paris: Fernand Hazan éditeur.
https://www.abebooks.fr/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31686189936&searchurl=sortby%3D17%26tn%3Ddictionnaire%2Bdes%2Bcivilisations%2Bafricaines&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title2
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