Crowdsource Online Discussion Grading in SPARK

Creating class discussions is a strong educational technique that allows students to construct ideas and articulate thoughts with their peers. Putting class discussions on the Web is a great way to extend course content outside of the classroom, and exposes students to online interactions– a crucial 21st century skill.

However, motivating students to participate meaningfully in SPARK discussion forums is sometimes a challenge. While formulating stimulating prompts and guiding the discussion through responses may help, grading posts is the most popular technique to get students’ voices out. Yet grading discussion forums can sometimes create an additional challenge for instructors, particularly those with large courses: how do you manage all those reponses?

One innovative way is by letting the members of the class grade themselves. SPARK’s built-in “Peer Review” feature for threaded topic discussions lets students anonymously give a numeric value to other student’s posts. Commonly known as crowdsourcing, this distributes the work of grading each response to the students. Therefore, many students can evaluate a few posts rather than one instructor evaluating many posts. While the instructor can see who graded each response, the students only see an average rating and a list of anonymous reviews. At the end of the discussion period, the instructor can click “Grade Topic” from the drop-down menu, and view the average rating of each post. The instructor or TA can type this number into the “Grade” box for each student

Each post calculates an average rating. This can be entered in as the student's grade for that discussion.

Pedagogical value
Beyond the administrative efficiency, why should instructors consider crowdsourcing grades? When the students are evaluating each other, they are held accountable by the classroom community. Thus, they might participate in ways that interest each other rather than what they think will please the instructor. Perhaps creating this unique discussion dynamic will encourage students to check in on the discussion more frequently, resulting in greater interest and participation. Additionally, crowdsourcing is becoming a large part of the Internet and Web culture. Sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and Current, as well as the comments section of the New York Times or CNN websites rely on their users to contribute and rate contributions in similar ways. Furthermore, user participation is a new “way of being” in the networked world that can be leveraged and discussed as an academic topic in itself.

The ratings are anonymous to students but visible to instructors.

Some things to think about when using the “Peer Review” feature in Spark

Treat it as an experiment. Be honest with your students about the nature of this activity: is it the first time you are trying it? Has it worked for you in the past? What are the dangers of grading this way?

Use it as supplementary to other graded assignments. If you weight the peer reviews too heavily, they might overpower other, more important aspects of your class. Consider having these evaluations contribute to a participation grade or be part of a larger assignment. This experiment should be fun, not daunting for the students.

Have clear expectations about what criteria the students should be evaluating. Clarify that the rating should not be about whether they agree or disagree with the post. Rather, the evaluation should represent the quality or utility of the response’s content.

Design a functional scale that uses clear language and quantification. Spark lets you create a custom peer review scale. Instructors should use clear language to describe what distinguishes a “3” rating from a “2” rating.

Contact the consultants in the Instructional Media Lab to talk more about Peer Review grading with SPARK.

Additional resources