PeerWise (Assignment 1)

This blog submission is to fulfill the requirements for Assignment 1 in the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology course LRNT523 at Royal Roads University, which involves sharing a resource relevant to the course. PeerWise (n.d.) is a free, web-based application that allows an instructor to create a repository for students where students can create, share, answer, rate, and discuss each other’s multiple-choice questions. Student activity is usually anonymous to other students, but instructors can oversee the activity and moderate question submissions or comments if necessary. By creating, answering, and evaluating questions, students improve their understanding of the content. Creating and evaluating are at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy, suggesting that a PeerWise student activity engages higher-order thinking (Anderson et al., 2001). Studies have found evidence that PeerWise leads to improved examination performance and deep learning (Bates, Galloway, & McBride, 2012; Denny, Luxton-Reilly, & Hamer, 2008a; McQueen, Shields, Finnegan, Higham, & Simmen, 2014; Hardy et al., 2014; Singh, 2014). Studies have also found that students tended to enjoy using PeerWise and contribute more questions than required (Bates et al., 2012; Denny et al., 2008b; Denny, Hanks, & Simon, 2010; Singh, 2014). Denny et al. (2009) found that questions and answers contributed by students were of high quality and that the few errors included by students in questions or answers were all found by other students.

Connecting PeerWise to this course, Foundations of Learning and Technologies, and the work that has already been done in the course, the constructivist approach, according to Ertmer and Newby (2013), encourages learners to share their own perspectives with others. Students can share their perspectives in PeerWise through both the questions and answers they contribute. Also according to Ertmer and Newby (2013), constructivism involves learners validating their own understandings through social negotiation. PeerWise allows learners to validate their understandings through discussions. Discussions might take place if there is disagreement about the correctness of a question or answer. This sharing of perspectives in the questions, answers, and discussions, according to Ertmer and Newby (2013), allows for further construction and honing of knowledge. PeerWise also provides students with an opportunity to apply new knowledge, which according to Merrill (2002) promotes learning.

References

Anderson, L., Krathwohl, D., Airasian, P., Cruikshank, K., Mayer, R., Pintrich, P., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy. New York. Longman Publishing.

Bates, S. P., Galloway, R. K., & McBride, K. L. (2012, February). Student-generated content: Using PeerWise to enhance engagement and outcomes in introductory physics courses. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1413, No. 1, pp. 123-126). AIP.

Denny, P., Hanks, B., & Simon, B. (2010, March). Peerwise: replication study of a student-collaborative self-testing web service in a us setting. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (pp. 421-425). ACM.

Denny, P., Hamer, J., Luxton-Reilly, A., & Purchase, H. (2008b, September). PeerWise: students sharing their multiple choice questions. In Proceedings of the fourth international workshop on computing education research (pp. 51-58). ACM.

Denny, P., Luxton-Reilly, A., & Hamer, J. (2008a, January). The PeerWise system of student contributed assessment questions. In Proceedings of the tenth conference on Australasian computing education-Volume 78 (pp. 69-74). Australian Computer Society, Inc..

Denny, P., Luxton-Reilly, A., & Simon, B. (2009, January). Quality of student contributed questions using PeerWise. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Conference on Computing Education-Volume 95 (pp. 55-63). Australian Computer Society, Inc..

Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Hardy, J., Bates, S. P., Casey, M. M., Galloway, K. W., Galloway, R. K., Kay, A. E., … & McQueen, H. A. (2014). Student-generated content: Enhancing learning through sharing multiple-choice questions. International Journal of Science Education, 36(13), 2180-2194.

McQueen, H. A., Shields, C., Finnegan, D. J., Higham, J., & Simmen, M. W. (2014). Peerwise provides significant academic benefits to biological science students across diverse learning tasks, but with minimal instructor intervention. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 42(5), 371-381.

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43-59.

PeerWise. (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2017, from https://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/

Singh, L. (2014). Technology enhanced peer learning with PeerWise: Experiences and perceptions from a developing country. The Caribbean Teaching Scholar, 4(1).