Abstract
We demonstrate that student engagement with PeerWise, an online tool that allows students to author and answer multiple-choice questions (MCQs), is associated with enhanced academic performance across diverse assessment types on a second year Genetics course. Benefits were consistent over three course deliveries, with differential benefits bestowed on groups of different prior ability. A rating scheme, to assess the educational quality of students' questions, is presented and demonstrates that our students are able intuitively to make such quality assessments, and that the process of authoring high quality questions alone does not explain the academic benefits. We further test the benefits of providing additional PeerWise support and conclude that PeerWise works efficiently with minimal intervention, and can be reliably assessed using automatically generated PeerWise scores.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 371–381 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 30 Jun 2014 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- Collaborative learning
- Participatory
- Peer learning
- PeerWise
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Dive into the research topics of 'Peerwise provides significant academic benefits to biological science students across diverse learning tasks, but with minimal instructor intervention'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Profiles
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Heather McQueen
- School of Biological Sciences - Personal Chair of Biology Education
Person: Academic: Not Research Active
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Martin Simmen
- Deanery of Biomedical Sciences - Senior Lecturer
- Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences
- Edinburgh Neuroscience
Person: Academic: Research Active