Indexing the Credibility of MOOCs

Description

Hoi is working with Teaching and Learning with Technology to examine peer assessment in MOOCs, specifically looking at Coursera’s Calibrated Peer Assessment tools. The pedagogy behind MOOCs is not fully understood, specifically aspects of student assessment and the ability to scale different types of assessment to thousands of students at a time. Peer assessment is one possible solution to this problem, although the notion of novice learners assessing other novice learners presents challenges.

In addition to providing expertise in research and assessment to help us analyze data from Penn State’s first MOOCs, Hoi is also pursuing the development of a new method of peer assessment that might be used in future MOOCs or future Penn State course offerings. Hoi states:

At the heart of the method is the development and validation of a ‘credibility index’ for each student based on several dimensions: accuracy, consistency, and transferability of judgment. Once validated, this index can be used to help provide accurate and informative feedback for assignments; and can help steer peer discussions toward the correct answer without instructor intervention.

The potential of the proposed credibility index is exciting, both in terms of enhancing peer assessments and also the ability to carry over into other areas of courses, such as discussion groups, team activities and peer mentoring. We look forward to working with Hoi and his colleagues throughout the summer!

Cohort

2013

Focus Area

Open Educational Resources
Theme: Massively Open Online Courses