How do I use online peer assessment to enhance student learning at a Sino-British transnational university in mainland China?

This thesis investigated how online peer assessment (PA) using the Moodle Workshop (MW) tool could be employed to enhance student learning at a Sino-British transnational university in mainland China. An action research (AR) orientation to inquiry was adopted, and the author worked with two groups of undergraduate students on different modules to explore how MW could be used to enhance their learning. Four aspects of PA that impacted on overall learning were considered: the validity and reliability of students’ PA grading; students’ skill in providing meaningful feedback to peers; students’ domain-specific learning from the PA activities; and student satisfaction with the PA activities.

Recommendations for online PA activity design were initially extrapolated from a review of literature, and these were then implemented through the online PA activities in this study. A final list of recommendations for practice was generated based on an analysis of these activities, as well as student questionnaire and interview responses. Final recommendations of note were that students should be provided with more training to assist them in grading lower quality assignments, as well as more training in writing appropriate feedback comments, especially for higher quality assignments. A full list of final recommendations is provided in the conclusion chapter.

Other key findings were that the online PA activities implemented in this study appeared to demonstrate good evidence of validity and reliability, and that feedback comments made by students to peers displayed a high degree of relevance and specificity. Student satisfaction with the PA activities also appeared to be high, when compared to other research.

This study contributes to knowledge about online PA by: reporting on online PA in the previously unresearched context of a transnational higher education institution in mainland China; reporting in detail completion rates for PA activities, which are not consistently reported in other research; reporting a statistical measure for PA reliability, which is seldom reported in other studies; noting differences in the generosity of scoring between expert, PA and self-assessment scores on the same task; noting a relationship within the context studied between the quality of assignments to be assessed, and the ability of peers to provide appropriate scores and feedback comments for these assignments.