Latest revision as of 13:02, 25 March 2014

Assessment Frequently Asked Questions

The following are some of the frequently asked questions about the assessment process used in Web-PA.

What should I do if one or more students in a group has effectively withdrawn from the course yet is still registered on the module?

This is where a student has failed to attend group meetings, and has taken no part in the group activity at all. Contrast this with free-riders in a later FAQ.

You need to be decisive here. First gather the facts together with any available evidence that the student has failed to participate. If you find out early enough in the assignment for the situation to be remedied then invite the withdrawn student to a face to face interview to discuss. If the assignment has ended, inform the student in writing that he/she will be assessed separately from the team and make a tutor's judgement on the mark based on actual proven contribution (this may be zero). Remove the student from the Web-PA team and allow the assessment to run.

What should I do if one or more students have not completed the Web-pa form during the assessment period?

Failure to complete causes considerable difficulties and it is worth putting in a little effort to maximise the response rate. We suggest that you send a reminder email to those who have failed to complete a form two days before the closing date: use the in-built email system and select 'students who have not submitted'. Soon after the assessment is closed, check to see how many students have failed to submit. If there are more than three or four, consider re-opening the assessment for, say 24 hours and sending a second 'final' email reminding students that their mark may be adversely affected unless they complete a form.

What should I do if I have identified that one or more students in the group are not contributing to the group effort (free-riders)?

By free-riders, we mean those students who occasionally attend meetings, and say they will do things, but actually do very little. They bluff the supervisor and expect to be included in the marks whilst simply going through the motions. If the student is a good communicator this can be very hard to detect.

The Web-PA system is designed to identify and adjust the marks for such students accordingly. You should, however, remind the whole group that all members have a responsibility for the effective functioning of teamwork and you can moderate the extreme effects of peer marking by altering the proportion of the team mark that is affected by the peer assessment (PA Weighting,). This factor is entered when you create a mark sheet at the end of the assessment.

Can I run more than one assessment for the same assignment?

Yes, you may run as many assessments as you want, as often as you like - even concurrently.

Why don't changes in 'My Forms' or 'My Groups' affect 'My Assessments'?

Forms, Groups and Assessments exist as separate entities within the system. When you create an assessment the form you selected, and the collection of groups you chose, are copied into the new assessment. This means any subsequent changes you make to either the forms or the groups will not affect the assessment.

This is entirely by design. Any changes to the criteria being used, or the group composition, during an assessment could throw off the Web-PA algorithm and generate bogus results. To minimise the risk of you accidently changing the form or groups during an assessment, Web-PA simply doesn't allow it.

If you need to change the criteria being used, or the groups being assessed, you can make the relevant changes in My Forms or My Groups, then edit your assessment to select the new form/collection of groups. You can do this up until the first student submits marks - at that point, the assessment is locked and the choices you have made are locked in.

How do I get the student's scores?

Once an assessment has been completed (i.e. The deadline for submissions has passed) it will appear in the "closed" tab. From there, you can create a mark sheet (It's the last of the small buttons next to the assessment's name).

The mark sheet sets the parameters which tweak the scoring algorithm (penalties for non-submission, etc). You can create as many different mark-sheets as you like, but you only need one to access the reports.

Once you've added a mark sheet to an assessment you'll see a "view reports" button next to it in "My Assessments" (just look under the 'Marked' tab).

There are a few different reports in there, and you can download them into Excel as well as viewing/printing them. If you haven't provided the overall group mark, then only some of the reports will be available because the algorithm needs the overall marks to do it's work properly.

Can students mark each other as they go along?

No. The students can only take an assessment once. You should schedule your assessment to run when your group activity has finished. Students can then submit marks for all the sections/criteria.