A. Mark Langan

Peer assessment of oral presentations: effects of student gender, university affiliation and participation in the development of assessment criteria

Peer assessment provides a useful mechanism to develop many positive qualities in students studying in higher education (HE). Potential influences on peer‐awarded marks include student qualities such as gender, HE background (e.g. university affiliation) and participation in the development of the assessment criteria. Many studies that have investigated peer assessment have placed great emphasis on marks from a single tutor, or very few tutors, from a single university. This study examined grades awarded by 11 tutors (affiliated with four universities) to oral presentations delivered on a residential field course by second‐year undergraduate students from two universities studying environmental or biological disciplines. Student assessors awarded marks of fairly high precision (correlating strongly with tutor grades) but averaged 5% higher than their tutors (i.e. of only moderate accuracy). Marginally higher marks (circa 1.6%) were awarded by student assessors to speakers studying at the same university. Gender influences were detected as males tended to grade other male speakers very slightly more highly than female speakers. Marks from females were unaffected by speaker gender. Students who participated in the development of the assessment criteria did not achieve higher grades for their presentations. However, when these ‘participants’ were assessing, they awarded lower marks than their peers (i.e. closer to, but not as low as, those awarded by tutors). Lower marks were also awarded during the middle of sessions, possibly resulting from factors associated with motivation and attention of speakers and markers. Overall, the potential biases in marking by naive assessors examined in this study may influence the validity of marks generated by peer assessment schemes, but the experience of this type of assessment had positive effects on those involved.

Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.

Interpreting context to the UK’s National Student (Satisfaction) Survey data for science subjects

Universities capture and use student feedback to improve the student experience, but how should information from national scale surveys be used at local and institutional levels? The authors explored the UK’s National Student (Satisfaction) Survey (NSS) data relevant to science and engineering programmes using percentages of students who were satisfied or very satisfied. For brevity, one NSS national dataset was explored, but the patterns found were consistent for the following year. Simple exploratory data analysis techniques underlined the care that is needed when interpreting NSS outputs, corroborating previous research into its international precursors. Factor analysis supported claims of a high internal consistency of the survey. Subject groupings showed consistent differences in responses, with some subjects consistently recording higher satisfaction. This reduces the usefulness of the NSS for comparing different subject groupings within a university. Universities provide different subject compositions, so direct comparisons between institutions are not straightforward. Subject groupings should be compared only against similar subjects, and then with due care to understand the complexity of satisfaction. Further analysis of national questionnaires like this is required to contextualise its outputs. For example, there is a national trend of low satisfaction with assessment feedback in all subjects, but the relationship between feedback satisfaction and overall satisfaction is complex. There are marked differences between subjects which may, in science subjects, be associated with mathematical content. There is scope for future elucidations of the ‘overall satisfaction’ value and for use of the measures of dissatisfaction.

Students assessing student: case studies on peer assessment

Abstract Peer-assessment can be viewed in many ways: from a tool for reflection by students to a method of reducing staff marking loads. When deciding whether to use peer-assessment, several questions arise. Can naïve inexperienced markers evaluate their peers? What factors influence student assessors? Should you ‘pass on’ your marking to students? This article considers current issues about peer-assessment by discussing preliminary findings from two current projects currently being undertaken.

Comparing amber fossil assemblages across the Cenozoic.

To justify faunistic comparisons of ambers that differ botanically, geographically and by age, we need to determine that resins sampled uniformly. Our pluralistic approach, analysing size distributions of 671 fossilized spider species from different behavioural guilds, demonstrates that ecological information about the communities of two well-studied ambers is retained. Several lines of evidence show that greater structural complexity of Baltic compared to Dominican amber trees explains the presence of larger web-spinners. No size differences occur in active hunters. Consequently, we demonstrate for the first time that resins were trapping organisms uniformly and that comparisons of amber palaeoecosystem structure across deep time are possible.

Does the Small White Butterfly (Pieris rapae L.) Aggregate Eggs on Plants with Greater Gas Exchange Activity

Few studies have investigated insect egg-laying preferences in relation to photosynthesis or transpiration of their host plants. It has been suggested that intravarietal preferences of the small white butterfly (Pieris rapae L.: Pieridae) include larger plants with characteristically higher transpiration rates. Interestingly this species, like many other Lepidoptera, may detect biogenic CO2 gradients associated with photosynthesis. We studied egg-laying preferences in working farm environments examining relationships among host choice, plant gas exchange activity, and plant size. Females discriminated between plants in monocultures on the basis of height. A balance of pre- and post–alighting preferences resulted in plants of medium size receiving eggs. Post–alighting preferences led to plants, but not alighted leaves, with higher rates of photosynthesis supporting eggs. These findings do not support a mechanistic basis for the use of gas exchange activity during host selection but, for the first time, indicate the greater physiological activity of crop plants that ultimately received the eggs of a pest insect.

Coherence between text comments and the quantitative ratings in the UK’s National Student Survey

Institutions are understandably interested in the profile of their own reputations based upon publicly available data about student experiences. The UK’s National Student Survey (NSS) metrics are integrated into several ‘Good University’ calculations, whereas teaching teams most often use the survey’s text comments to change practices, rather than the metrics directly. There is little information about how messages from the national survey’s text comments relate to the accompanying numerical ratings, partly because text comments are confidential to the institution and unavailable for wide-scale research. We categorised institutional NSS text comments into themes that mirrored those of the original questionnaire. Comparisons were made between frequencies of thematic comments and the national ratings of satisfaction for several subject areas. For the first time, we demonstrate broad agreement between comments about measures of teaching staff and course organisation with the performance of the subject areas (compared to metrics of their national counterparts). These findings are consistent with previous quantitative models predicting the most important factors that most influence overall satisfaction ratings. We intend this study to be a catalyst for other institutions to explore their non-publicly available, textual returns in a similar way. The outcomes of this type of work are pertinent to all countries that use large-scale surveys. However, institutions will need to release findings to a public audience if we are to gain a national/international perspective on this key linkage between publicly available metrics and the associated text comments.

Student Learning Networks on Residential Field Courses: Does Size Matter?.

Abstract This article describes learner and tutor reports of a learning network that formed during the completion of investigative projects on a residential field course. Staff and students recorded project-related interactions, who they were with and how long they lasted over four phases during the field course. An enquiry based learning format challenged individuals to complete investigative bioscience projects utilising peers (n = 20) and tutors (n = 14) as resources. The residential nature of the course ensured full participation of tutors and learners at all stages of the study. Overall, students interacted for ‘academic purposes’ with about 40% of their peers and over 50% of the tutors in their potential network, although there were some differences between students and tutors in their perceptions of the interactions. In addition, patterns of networking activity differed between project stages. Tutors and learners were most interactive at the start of the course, although the data collection/analysis stages were also busy in terms of tutor support. Learners reported that they valued their interactions, but larger networks did not lead to higher marks as high attainment students were found to have worked in smaller networks. The findings provide insights into how individuals are used as resources in learning networks and the dynamics of learning networks during a residential case study.