Subject: Bachelor’s supplementary subject in classical studies. Course: Cultural History of Antiquity. Study level: Bachelor's degree, third semester. Size of class: Approx. 10.
In the feedback activities, the students must work with ideas for their individual projects that complete the course. The students’ work is read by the teacher and fellow students, who give feedback on the basis of the criteria for feedback defined by the teacher.
In the evaluation of the exam performance, emphasis is placed on the extent to which the student:
The activity was chosen to support the type of exam, which is a written take-home assignment on a topic of the student’s choice. At the same time, the activity can incorporate the continuous development of the students’ written projects in the classroom teaching. In this way, both teaching activities and individual projects may benefit.
The activity prepares the students for an individual project, but also for face-to-face teaching in the classroom.
The teacher prepares a description of tasks for the weekly face-to-face teaching; this involves that each student must write a short text and then give feedback on two texts written by fellow students. The task description is written in a online document, and the teacher must make sure all students have editing rights. This means that the students can complete the task and give feedback to each other in the same document. The teacher creates web links for the weekly online documents in the course in Blackboard (Attention: Brightspace is now used) so that the students can easily find and access them (see picture 1 below).
Below the instruction in each online document (see picture 2 below), a table has been created with boxes for the students’ texts and feedback comments. The students are instructed to write their names in the boxes where they write their text and peer feedback. Picture 3 below shows an excerpt from the online document where the students wrote their texts and gave feedback in week 36.
The manuscript for the collaboration process, i.e. collaboration script, which is used each week in the course, has the following structure:
Collaboration Script
In preparation for class each week:
Preparation for the students to work with their own project, but also a chance to practice seeing the connections between their own project topic and those of fellow students. Good discussions are created in class because the students know about each other’s project topics. The effect of writing text with academic content each week was that the students performed well at the exam. Some students demonstrated clearly in their exam assignments that they had been positively inspired by the other texts and topics.
Consider the volume of activities during the course. After this testing round I recommend that the number of activities is reduced so that they do not take place every week, in consideration of the teacher’s workload, but also that of the students.
If more than ten students participate, it is a good idea to divide them into groups, each with their own online document, in which their peer feedback activities take place.
Theme course on peer feedback for teachers at Aarhus University
The example of practice was created by Camilla Horster, former employee at Aarhus University, og edited by the editorial staff at AU Educate.
