Christine,
Peer Evaluations: How often to do them?
I have
always done them at the end of the course. That is when they get
plugged into the final grade I give to each student.
But a few
years after first doing TBL, I noticed that there were often one or two
students (in a class of 70 or so) who were getting
"blind-sided" at the end of the course by their peer
evaluation. They thought they were going to get either an above
average or at least average peer evaluation score, but got much less than
average. I didn't mind students getting a below-average score if
that is what they deserved but I did not like them getting
blind-sided.
So I
started doing a classwide "grade calculation" exercise at
mid-semester, ~week 8. We simply plugged their test scores, etc.
that had occurred to date; this let them see what all the different
activities thus far added up to in terms of a letter grade. But a
major reason for doing this was that this required a peer evaluation from
all the groups, since some of the activities were graded group activities
- and I wanted them to see what the impact of peer evaluations were on
their overall grade. (Note: I use the system whereby peer
evaluations come out as a "percentage multiplier" of the graded
group activities, so it can have a significant impact on the overall
grade.) This peer evaluation score did not go into the gradebook;
it was just for information purposes.
Doing this
at mid-semester accomplished just what I wanted it to. Most
everyone got a peer evaluation score that was close to what they
expected. But for the one or two students who got much lower peer
evaluation scores, it did two things: it alerted them to a potential
problem and it created a wonderful "teaching moment."
Almost
always these people were trying to be the leaders in their group but were
too aggressive about it, and they usually came in to complain to me about
the scores. So I simply pointed out that no one complained that
they weren't working hard or weren't smart; they just didn't like the way
the person was trying to lead the group. Good news: the person now
had specific suggestions for what the others did not like about their
leadership style - and they had 8 weeks to make some changes. They
always did, always got good end-of-semester peer evaluations, and learned
a something about important about themselves that, in my view, might have
been the most important thing they learned in the course, maybe in
college: how to be a better leader of a small group!
As a result, I have continued to do a mid-semester calculation of peer
evaluation scores (not for the gradebook, just for feedback) ever since.
Good luck with your efforts to find the right way to use TBL in your own
courses!
Dee
At 01:20 AM 4/15/2008, Christine Kuramoto wrote:
Hi all,
Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions on the RATS and
IF-AT
forms!
My next question is, how often and when do you do the peer
evaluations?
And further, since I'm teaching Japanese students and cuturally they
may
not be very willing to help in setting up the percentages for grades
(how much weight goes to individual work, group work, exams), any
suggestions for weighting the grades that have been successful for
you
would be welcome!
Christine
--
*******
Christine Kuramoto, Assistant Professor: Medical English
Kyushu University, Department of Medical Education
Faculty of Medical Sciences
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Phone: (+81)92-642-6186 Fax: (+81)92-642-6188
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L. Dee
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**National Project Director, Teaching & Curriculum Assessment
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(Jossey-Bass, 2003)
**Former President of the POD Network [Professional and Organizational
Development] in Higher Education (2004-2005)