Activities

Peerwise Assignment: Human Body

By Pierre-Luc Grondin, Champlain Regional College

At a Glance

Discipline

  • Social Sciences
  • STEM
  • Biology

Instructional Level

  • College & CEGEP

Course

  • Human Body

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

  • Individual
  • Whole Class

Type of Tasks

  • Solving problems
  • Reviewing & assessing peers
  • Creating & designing
  • Taking a quiz & test

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

  • Peerwise
  • Google Forms

Class size

  • Small (20-49)

Time

Semester long

Instructional Purpose

  • Consolidation & metacognition
  • Assessment & knowledge refinement

Overview

The aim of this activity is for students to design high level questions related to course material as a review and application exercise. This activity benefits students as they learn question design as they review for the test. They build a pool of extra study questions designed by themselves and their peers.

It employs two Active learning Strategies, Peer Instruction and Toolkit. Students are shown how to design multiple questions through an examples and Bloom's taxonomy. Over the course of the semester, students design three question related to course material and answer/rate/comment on 10 (for each deadline) questions submitted ...

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The aim of this activity is for students to design high level questions related to course material as a review and application exercise. This activity benefits students as they learn question design as they review for the test. They build a pool of extra study questions designed by themselves and their peers.

It employs two Active learning Strategies, Peer Instruction and Toolkit. Students are shown how to design multiple questions through an examples and Bloom's taxonomy. Over the course of the semester, students design three question related to course material and answer/rate/comment on 10 (for each deadline) questions submitted by their peers. Students use this compiled question bank as study material.

Read Less -

Instructional Objectives

  • To help students review the course material and to design questions in a format that they will be asked to answer on the test.
  • To provide students with extra material to study and apply their knowledge for the test/exam.
  • This activity helps students to develop study techniques: making links between concepts, identifying important material (vs focussing on details)
  • Give students tools on how to answer MCQ questions (especially when they don’t know the answer, they can work it backwards and try to find the wrong answers, one by one).

Workflow & Materials

Workflow

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow
Document

MCQ Feedback - DOC - Peerwise Assignment: Human Body

Pierre-Luc Grondin

Document

Student Instructions - DOC - Peerwise Assignment: Human Body

Pierre-Luc Grondin

Document

Article - PDF - Peerwise Assignment: Human Body

Pierre-Luc Grondin

CourseFlow tool Pdf

Peerwise Assignment: Human Body CourseFlow

Pierre-Luc Grondin

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

  • This activity encourages students to learn through application of the material rather than memorization.
  • Students supplying an explanation for their answers shows that they can put course material in new contexts.
  • Designing and answering higher order questions encourages students to make links between topics and to other systems.
  • Students learn how to approach the material, by taking the perspective of designing questions, the student can see what information to prioritize and what parts of the material are more complex or difficult.

Challenges

  • It is a lot of work for both the students and the teachers. If class size is too big it becomes a lot of work for the teacher, while providing students with more questions to answer (good thing for them).
  • Class size can sometimes be too small to have high enough engagement in each question so find ways to add questions (pooling other sections together, or from past semesters).

Tips

  • Ensure all questions/comments are anonymous so that instructor feedback can be posted directly on the comment thread so everyone can benefit.
  • Find a balance of time management and pedagogical benefit (for instructor and students).
  • Weight the questions differently to allow students to improve as they familiarize themselves with Bloom’s taxonomy for the first time

Feedback

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