Enhancing Teaching and Learning in Group Projects through Poster Assessment

Discussion

The response rate was quite low due to the fact that many students went on holiday once they had completed the requirements for their final year of study. Although an attempt was made to encourage the students to return their feedback (by sending the questionnaire and a reminder before the end of the term), it was not totally successful as some students completed the year earlier than the rest.

Posters are increasingly becoming popular as an educational tool for teaching, learning and assessment purposes (Sorensen and Boland, 1991; Wharrad et al., 1995; Moneyham et al., 1996; Moule et al., 1998; Akister et al., 2000; Smith et al., 2002). The use of posters can offer a variety of advantages:

a. is less intimidating than an oral presentation and hence encourages discussion (Crooks and Kilpatrick, 1998)

b. gives students an opportunity to learn from each other's work, hence enabling them to see a range of topics and to engage in a number of dialogues with respect to the topics (Akister & Kim, 1998)

c. encourages students to be reflective and creative (Moneyham et al., 1996; Barcher et al., 1998)

d. encourages students to learn to organize and re conceptualize their complex work into an easily assimilable form and thus gain a deeper understanding of their work (Wharrad et al., 1995)

e. allows for self- and peer-assessment which would help students understand what or how other students are doing (Smith et al., 2002)

In the current study, the majority of the students experienced most of the above advantages. They reported that the poster exercise was an effective way to help them to learn, and that self- and peer-assessment also helped them to be more reflective (to make balanced judgments and to critique their own work in order to do better). Some students however had reservations about the use of self- and peer-assessment. Overall, over 80% of the students agreed that poster assessment was a useful element of assessment for 'Project'. From the focus group interview, the students' main problem was the time constraints, and they had reservations about the fairness of marking their own work.

Nevertheless, they all felt that the poster exercise helped them to recognize and focus on the important issues of their project work. Poster making was fun and allowed them to be creative; and peer-assessment helped them to learn by placing them in the marker's perspective. They suggested that all three elements of assessment (literature review, final report and poster) were useful as they complemented each other, and each element helped the students to learn in a different way. This is in agreement with the concept that where possible, multiple assessment tools should be used in assessments (Akister et al., 2000; Orsmond et al., 2000). In the current study, the students also had a chance to receive recognition for their efforts from other sources, as expressed by Moneyham et al. (1996), "beyond the classroom". They were allowed to display their posters at a conference co-organized by the department, and students saw this as an 'honor', though some students expressed disappointment that delegates did not spent much time reading their posters.

From the students' perspective, the incorporation of poster assessment as an element of assessment for project work facilitates and enhances learning. Although a number of students had reservations about the use of self- and peer-assessment, the majority agreed that from these exercises they had learned to be more reflective, and were motivated to do better. They also commented that the exercise gave them a sense of ownership and achievement. Similar positive (and negative) comments have been obtained from students in other studies on posters (Pelletier, 1993; Moneyham et al., 1996; Akister & Kim, 1998; Barcher et al., 1998; Moule et al., 1998).

Many educators used group posters instead of individual posters. If a group poster is used, the approach can also foster reflection, discussion, empathy, group discussion and coherence (Sorensen & Boland, 1991; Wharrad et al., 1995; Orsmond et al., 2000). Indeed, in the current study, some students envisages these advantages, and proposed the use of a group poster instead of individual poster as it would encourage team work and cooperation rather than "competition between members of the same group". This may be the reason why only 46% of the students agreed that this poster exercise facilitated communication between group members. Hence, posters can be used not only as an alternative assessment tool, but also to encourage development of a variety of desirable skills in students.

Self-assessment is an important learning process which can help students to develop critical reflection, as they have to evaluate their own and other students' work, to learn responsibility towards others via assessment, and to learn to make critical judgments. It is therefore seen to play a fundamental role in all aspects of learning, simulating what Beard and Hartley (1984) described as "real life situations, where individuals and groups have to be accountable for their work". It is therefore necessary for students to participate if assessment is to be a part of the learning process. The importance of self-assessment is perhaps best presented by Boud and Lublin (1983) who stated, "one of the most important processes that can occur in undergraduate education is the growth in students of the ability to be realistic judges of their own performance and the ability to monitor their own learning". According to Falchikov (2005), self-assessment can be a way:

1.to involve learners in the assessment of self development and learning, hence motivating or requiring them to think about what had been learnt so far, what/where the gaps are, and how to fill up or minimize the gaps

2. of introducing the concept of individual judgment to learners

3. to facilitate communication among teachers and peers

4. to involve learners to reflect on the meaning of good work

In the current study, our results also indicate that self-assessment complemented peer-assessment. Peer-assessment has been shown to be a dynamic and interactive process. The main advantages of peer-assessment are that it allows a more student-centred learning under a non-threatening environment, and the students participate actively in the assessment process where they are involved in critiquing and making judgment on the quality and standard of the work of their peers (Orsmond et al., 2000). Peer-assessment also allows feedback to peers to enable them to improve their performance. The students in the current study commented that peer-assessment allowed them to know more about how their work were being assessed, and helped them to improve their own work, thereby increasing their understanding of their own work. It may well be that, as the students helped to develop the assessment criteria, they had a better understanding of the criteria which facilitated their work and helped them to perform better. Indeed as asserted by Orsmond et al. (2000), students can be expected to have a greater understanding of criteria if they were developed by the students themselves.

Smith et al. (2002) reported that, "a minority of students remained resistant to the principles and process of peer marking despite the intervention, due mainly to a lack of confidence in the ability of their peers to award fair and unbiased marks." Not surprisingly, in the current study, there were also students who had concerns about the fairness of peer-assessment as they felt that students do not have adequate experience to judge work by peers. What was perhaps unexpected was that only two students raised this concern in their response to the questionnaire, although at the focus group interview, this was one of the major concerns raised. One possible reason could be because the weighting for this element of assessment was not high, and the poster was marked blind, so most students, weighing the pros and cons, decided that this mode of assessment was worth the time they invested in it. Only about 50% of the students felt that peer-assessment was fair. This was again not surprising, taking into account, as mentioned earlier, their previous bad experience. What was positive was that only 15% thought it was unfair. Another reason why students in this study were not overly concerned about peer marking was the use of a self-developed assessment checklist (a detailed checklist (see Appendix 3)) which helped the students to focus on what they were supposed to assess, hence facilitating consistencies among students, and between students and the teacher.

Only about 50% of the students thought peer-assessment was useful, and the majority of the students (77%) were neutral about the usefulness of self-assessment. This was perhaps the first time that the students did self and peer-assessment under such setting, so, perhaps what we need is time. According to Orsmond et al. (2000), students need time, experience and support to work through different assessment processes ("Time to reflect and develop skills and understanding, experience to be able to make qualitative judgments and support to reassure the student during the learning process.") No doubt, the time and effort put into the preparation of students for this assessment, and the assurance made to students contributed to their acceptance, as commented by the students at the focus group interview.

For an assessment to be done properly, to address specific intended learning objectives, both the teacher and the students have to be prepared for the process. It is not realistic to expect students to know how to do proper assessment simply by giving them a set of guidelines. In the current study, the process of poster assessment was explained in detail before implementation to allow students to understand why this mode of assessment was implemented. It was believed that if the students understood the rationale behind, they would be more willing to do the exercise and to take it seriously. Students were assured that self and peer-assessment were not implemented to make them do the work which should be done by the teacher. It was not an exercise to reduce the teacher's workload as the teacher (and another assistant) had to mark all the posters. Guidelines and examples were prepared and given to students to allow them to prepare for the process. Meetings were held to go through the guidelines with the students, and the objectives of peer-assessment were clearly explained. The students were also given the chance to develop the assessment criteria after doing a mock (peer) poster assessment. Left to themselves, not all students would read the guidelines carefully or remember them. Going through them together with the students, with a mock assessment, was more likely to leave a stronger impression and would help students remember them better. Indeed, many authors have reported the importance of allowing the learners to have ownership of the process, i.e. of involving learners in the setting of criteria (Stefani, 1994; McDowell & Sambell, 1999; Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000). To assist the students to do the assessment accurately, the assessment form was also fairly detailed (see Appendix 3). However, despite all the preparation work done before the assessment exercise, there were still two students who felt that there was inadequate guidance. It is probably inevitable that no matter how much guidance is given, there would always be students who want more, but then again, it may be that these students referred to other forms of guidance. Unfortunately, in view of the anonymity of the feedback exercise, it was not possible to find out what more could be done in terms of guidance from these students in the current study.

In their study, Smith et al. (2002) reported that some of their students had a concern about the lack of anonymity of the peer assessment. In the current study, there was an attempt to make all peer assessment anonymous and to mask the 'marker' - although the students would know which group of three students the posters on a certain topic belonged to, they were masked as to the individual ownership of the poster. However, as students commented, total anonymity was not achieved and was difficult. To increase the confidence of the students on this mode of assessment, as well as to serve as a gentle warning to them to do the assessment properly, students were informed that if the grades they gave were significantly different from those given by the two teacher assessors for the same poster, they would be invited to meet with the teacher to discuss and to come to a compromise after going through the poster again. It was, however, also made clear to the students that there were bound to be some cases of significant discrepancies. Students were also assured that they would not be penalized in any way should their marks, which they fairly awarded, be different from the teacher's. Students agreed that this requirement was important to assure them that the marking would be as 'fair' as possible. In this study, there were about five students who were required to 'meet' with the staff about the grades given. All were due to some misunderstandings or misinterpretations.

Improvement to the implementation of this element of assessment will no doubt engender a more enthusiastic response from the students. Suggested improvements to this mode of assessment include:

• Group instead of individual posters

• Allow more time to prepare the posters

• Involvement of own supervisors

• Briefing on projects to peers (by each group of students) before commencement of poster assessment

• Masking of assessors (though this would not be possible with group posters)

• Must have at least one marker who marks all the posters to ensure consistency and minimize bias

• Improvement of the assessment form (rating checklist) to ensure heavier weighting on content An important point is that since students learn from developing their own assessment criteria, it is therefore necessary for each batch of students to develop their own criteria rather than be given the criteria developed by the previous year's students. Hopefully, the assessment exercise involved will increase students' confidence in making assessment for their peers and for self, hence increasing the motivation, confidence and ability to be a lifelong learner. As teachers, we need to ask ourselves, every now and then, why we assess our students. We need to remind ourselves that assessment should not only assess the content of the work submitted by a student, but it must also prepare the student for future learning. Traditional assessment tools, depending on how we use them, can be used to achieve these purposes. In this study, I chose to introduce another assessment tool, the poster (which, as some may argue, is also a traditional assessment tool), to incorporate self- and peer-assessment. As cautioned by Barcher et al. (1998) and Akister et al. (2000), posters or reports or any other assessment tool, may not be suitable for all student in view of the various styles of learning among students. I believe therefore, that to minimize stress and potentially disadvantaging students, it is important to use multiple assessment tools wherever possible.

In her new book, "Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement", Falchikov (2005) presented excellent discussions on assessment and student involvement, and practical solutions to aid learning in higher and further education. She asserted that in recent years, the main reason teachers gave for involving students in assessment "is the benefit the experience brings to learners". On the question of How well are students able to judge their own work? and How reliable or valid are student peer assessments?, she wrote, "... a quick, and somewhat flippant answer to both might be, 'Quite well (or quite reliable) mostly, if they are taught how to'". The keywords are of course, 'if they are taught how to'. She stressed that, "Good self- or peer assessment requires transparency and openness........ It seems that the need to be explicit helps teachers as well as students."

To conclude, the majority of students in the current study reported that poster assessment was effective in helping them to recognize and focus on the important issues of their work. Students found poster making fun, and the exercise allowed for creativity, although some students had reservations about the use of peer- and self-assessment. Most students agreed that self-assessment prepared them to do peer-assessment in a fair and honest way, and helped them to be more reflective, and peer-assessment helped them to learn by placing them in the assessor's perspective. The main problem that students had with this assessment element was time constraints. If used correctly as an additional element of assessment, poster assessment in conjunction with self- and peer-assessment can be effective in facilitating and enhancing learning.

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مواضيع ذات صلة

Introducing Computer-Aided Peer Assessment (CAPA) in Engineering Conclusions

Discussion and student feedback

Implementation and methodology

Introducing CAPA in engineering

Introducing Computer-Aided Peer Assessment (CAPA) in Engineering

Appendix 3 Assessment form developed and used by students (Rating Checklist)

Appendix 2 Focus group meeting question list

Appendix 1 Questionnaire

Focus group interview

Results Questionnaire

Focus group interview

Methods of soliciting feedback Questionnaire