Multimodal assessment, individual and peer review, and deeper learning: experiments in human sciences (original) (raw)

When students no longer achieve the learning outcomes using the traditional form of assessment is it time to change your methods? This is the problem addressed in an experimental unit assessment reform in a second-year linguistic unit. Learning designers in partnership with the unit teaching team, co-created a non-traditional approach to transform one assessment task to address three goals: (a) to better facilitate the co-creation of knowledge and negotiation of communicating ideas amongst groups of students; (b) to expand student assessment literacy and empower student selfregulation using dialogic, collectivist, multi-sourced and developmental feedback methods; and (c) to create a deeply engaging, creative and challenging interactive learning opportunity to develop personal epistemologies. The new assessment strategy included: (i) a co-created rubric activity between teachers and students, (ii) assigned groups collaborating to develop short reusable learning objects (videos), (iii) the group submission, the application of peer review using a peer marking tool, (iv) the submission of an individual reflection on both, individual contribution to the group task, and a response by each student (i.e. agreement or rebuttal) to the peer feedback, (v) review (i.e. agreement or rebuttal) by other group members of each individual evaluation, and (vi) the release of final marks. This presentation will discuss the results of this experiment from multiple perspectives: the students, unit teaching team, and learning designers through the assessment data, reflections, interviews and surveys. Preliminary results from this exercise have demonstrated: the positive reception by students and impact on their engagement and learning; increased awareness of individual learning through discussion and exchange at multiple points from multiple