Gavin Rand, who teaches History, Politics, and Social Sciences at the University of Greenwich, had a creative and collaborative idea to utilise the experience of his Level 5 History students to create audio assessment guides for his Level 4 History students. The idea was that student volunteers from Level 5 would create “PeerGuide” podcasts for the core History course HIST1022: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. These “were intended to provide relevant and task specific guidelines, which would help incoming students to better identify and respond to the ‘threshold’ competencies essential to successful academic study.” Further, Gavin hoped that “engaging students as ‘change agents’ to co-produce teaching and learning materials would provide a more accessible and focussed means of introducing students to key academic competencies (Dunne & Zandstra, 2011) enhancing learners’ abilities to identify, assimilate and respond to key priorities in complex situations”.
The Project
After the initial call for volunteers, seven students responded and six signed up to participate. Each student was given a digital MP3 recorder as well as access to a laptop with audio editing software. The equipment was provided by Greenwich Connect as a part of the 2013/4 round of seed funding.
The initial proposal was four five PeerGuides (one each for the Peer Review (Précis), Literature Review, Group Presentation, Essay and Exam) to be produced. Because the idea was to provide student-authored guidance that was “authentic and accessible, not didactic or prescriptive”, Gavin had a small role in facilitating the production of the guides. He assisted in setting up meetings, assembling and delivery the guides through Moodle, but did not contribute to the content of the first set of PeerGuides.
While not all five of the guides were produced, the two that were created were “the two which usually cause new students the most difficulties and so it was instructive to evaluate the effectiveness of the PeerGuides for these assessment tasks”.
- Précis Exercise (Peer Review) – students are required to write a 300 word précis of an elementary journal article. Three separate podcasts were produced either by individuals or pairs of volunteers.
Listen to the PeerGuides here:
- Student Guide to the Precis No 1
- Student Guide to the Precis No 2
- Student Guide to the Precis No 3
Outcome: 26 of 52 students listened to at least one of the podcasts. Gavin believes that the first podcast digresses often but does highlight key points as to how and why to do well on the assignment. He also found that both the second and the third podcasts offered either very little substance or not much more than what he already offers during the lectures.
- Literature Review – students are required to review academic literature on one of three topics related to the course in 1200 words. This PeerGuide was produced collaboratively with the tutor and volunteers after the volunteers sought more guidance and direction.
Listen to the PeerGuide here:
Outcome: 24 out of 52 students listened to this PeerGuide. Because it was co-produced, the guide has more substance than the others. They were happy to make connections to the Précis as well.
Challenges
There were a few interruptions in the process that resulted in the project achieving less than the desired result. However, what they were able to produce was beneficial to several Level 4 students and created a great learning experience for the volunteers and the tutor.
A few of the issues were: due to scheduling constraints two assignments were removed from the project and due to volunteer time constraints, it was challenging to gather them to produce more than two guides. Further, Turnitin’s PeerMark facility was withdrawn as a service. It was intended to provide the opportunity for students to engage in self and peer review. However, due to integration with Moodle, this service became unavailable. This was a severe limitation because it was to be used to assess the value and effectiveness of the student-authored PeerGuides.
Lessons Learned
- This assignment was more labour intensive and required more tutor participation that originally anticipated. Accommodations for getting the volunteers organised and focussed need to be made at the planning stage.
- Gather feedback from students currently progressing on the course as opposed to students who completed the course during the precious year. Too much time between assessment and when they’re asked to give guidance can reduce the quality and efficacy of the advice given.
- The initial plan was overambitious. Have reasonable expectations about the amount of time and effort both the tutor and the volunteer students are willing to dedicate to the project.
- While the recorders and laptop were effective and useful, high-quality recordings can be made using many smart phones (which most students have) and can be edited using free software online.
Future Plans
Gavin hopes that the PeerMark facility in Turnitin will be restored. In the event that it is, the students will be required to complete both peer and self-assessments after completing each of the five course assignments. Upon completion, students will then be asked to offer their own recommendations about the assignment. The course tutor will then review all of the recommendations and collate the best ones into a podcast for future groups.
If you would like to talk to someone about how you and your students might make good use of podcasts in your courses, get in touch with the Greenwich Connect team. We’ll be glad to discuss this with you.