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Author(s): Rice, Charles W; Schoen, Robin; Aristidou, Aristos; Burgess, Shane C; Capalbo, Susan; Czarnecki-Maulden, Gail; Dunham, Bernadette; Ejeta, Gibesa; Famigilietti, Jay S; Gould, Fred; Hamer, John; Jackson-Smith, Douglas B; Jones, James W; Kebreab, Ermias; Kelley, Stephen S; Leach, Jan E; Lougee, Robin; McCluskey, Jill J; Plaut, Karen I; Salvador, Ricardo J; Sample, V Alaric

Previous studies of contributing student pedagogies (CSPs) have shown gains for students through increased summative grade and demonstration of deeper levels of learning. Resolution activities have been postulated by Draper (2009) as another way of enhancing students’ learning. In this paper, we show examples of learning occurring through resolution activities for students in higher education using PeerWise, a CSP tool, and we describe this as uncertainty-resolution that enhances learning. We then suggest a model through which this, and all learning in PeerWise, might take place. Finally, we anticipate that evidence of uncertainty-resolution will be seen in other PeerWise repositories; if this is so, we suggest that other educators using PeerWise should encourage and enhance their students’ learning by facilitating uncertainty-enhanced learning within PeerWise, and more broadly in other CSP activities.

Articles discussing and analysing student peer-review activities proliferate the educational literature, typically describing one or more class exercises where students provide feedback on each other’s work. These papers usually focus on a peer-review activity designed as a scholarly study, and make conclusions about its success or otherwise. There is not one standard model for ‘peer-review’, and information on the many different assessment designs used is distributed over an increasing number of publications and websites. This paper provides a meta-review of peer-review activities as they are implemented in practice, using configuration data from over a thousand assignments conducted using an online peer-review system during an eight-year period. We present data on the wide variety of assignment designs and the parameters that comprise them, their rubrics, and comparisons between subject areas. Information on the norms and range of all decisions to be made will encourage instructors (both new to ...

Drawing on eight years of observation and correspondence from the Aropa project, we report on the issues important to academics who conduct on-line student peer-review activities, and the features they request to support their own instructional designs. The Aropa project is unusually broad, having so far supported over 100 instructors at 20 institutions across nine countries, almost one thousand activities, and more than 36,000 individual students. As the designers, developers, maintainers and advisors of an evolving and widely used tool, we use our unique position to report on the perspectives and priorities of instructors and students in this important and developing field.

We report on a study comparing peer feedback with feedback written by tutors on a large, undergraduate software engineering programming class. Feedback generated by peers is generally held to be of lower quality to feedback from experienced tutors, and this study sought to explore the extent and nature of this difference. We looked at how seriously peers undertook the reviewing task, differences in the level of detail in feedback comments and differences with respect to tone (whether comments were positive, negative or neutral, offered advice or addressed the author personally). Peer feedback was also compared by academic standing, and by gender. We found that, while tutors wrote longer comments than peers and gave more specific feedback, in other important respects (such as offering advice) the differences were not significant.

Current approaches to risk management place insufficient emphasis on the system knowledge available to the assessor, particularly in respect of the dynamic behavior of the system under threat, the role of human agents (HAs), and the knowledge available to those agents. In this article, we address the second of these issues. We are concerned with a class of systems containing HAs playing a variety of roles as significant system elements-as decisionmakers, cognitive agents, or implementers-that is, human activity systems. Within this family of HAS, we focus on safety and mission-critical systems, referring to this subclass as critical human activity systems (CHASs). Identification of the role and contribution of these human elements to a system is a nontrivial problem whether in an engineering context, or, as is the case here, in a wider social and public context. Frequently, they are treated as standing apart from the system in design or policy terms. Regardless of the process of policy definition followed, analysis of the risk and threats to such a CHAS requires a holistic approach, since the effect of undesirable, uninformed, or erroneous actions on the part of the human elements is both potentially significant to the system output and inextricably bound together with the nonhuman elements of the system. We present a procedure for identifying the potential threats and risks emerging from the roles and activity of those HAs, using the 2014 flooding in southwestern England and the Thames Valley as a contemporary example.

Within the last ten years the British government has put in place a structure for assessing the State funded secondary system of education which has three major stands : inspection of schools, testing of pupils, public reporting of school performances. As a result of the 1992 Education Act the inspection process has been deeply reformed. All English pupils are required to sit tests in English, mathematics and science at the ages of 11 and 14. From September 1997 teachers will have to assess 14 year old pupils in all subjects of the National Curriculum. Assessment of pupils at the age of 16 continues to be done by means of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE ). Public reporting on school performance has taken the form of the publication of the so-called «league tables». These solutions are of course open to criticism., L’évaluation dans le système scolaire anglais. Au cours de la dernière décennie le gouvernement britannique a mis en place une structure destinée à évaluer l’enseignement secondaire qui reçoit des fonds publics. Cette évaluation comporte trois volets : l’inspection des écoles, l’évaluation individuelle des élèves et la publication d’un rapport sur les résultats des différentes écoles. Aux termes de la loi sur l’éducation de 1992, les procédures d’inspection ont été profondément réformées. Tout élève anglais est soumis à des tests de niveau en anglais, mathématiques et sciences à l’âge de 11 ans et à l’âge de 14 ans. À partir de septembre 1997, l’évaluation faite à l’âge de 14 ans portera sur toutes les matières du National Curriculum. L’évaluation à l’âge de 16 ans continue de prendre la forme d’un examen, le General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Le rapport sur les résultats des écoles a pris la forme de la publication des «league tables». Ces choix sont naturellement l’objet de critiques., Hamer John. Assessing the System : the English Experience. In: Cahiers Charles V, n°21, décembre 1996. France et Grande-Bretagne aujourd'hui. Essais de civilisation comparée. pp. 177-183.